Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, Howrah-711 103, West Bengal, India E-mail: bhaduri.soumyadeep@gmail.com, debabtata@civil.iiests.ac.in Manuscript received online 17 December 2020, revised and accepted 31 December 2020 Increasing population, depleting ground water and uncertain precipitation is causing subsequent shortage of potable water and making it inevitable to put an end to unrestricted use of potable water for all purposes. Therefore, the focus of the researches must be shifted toward the recovery and reuse of wastewater. Membrane bioreactor (MBR) has high possibility to give a way out from the aforesaid situation. MBR gives a very good quality effluent that can be used in all purposes other than drinking. A number of full-scale plants are there all over the globe for treating industrial as well as municipal wastewater. However, mass adoption of MBR treatment is not implemented because fouling of membrane and consumption of energy still remain serious challenges of the MBR technology. Here, the MBR process has been discussed from its preliminary stage to the recent developments, which render the effluent suitable for reuse. Also data of treatment efficiency for various wastewater streams have been provided for domestic and industrial wastewater as well as landfill leachate.