Abstract
The issues concerning the management of sewage sludge produced in wastewater treatment plants are becoming more important in Europe due to: (i) the modification of sludge quality (biological and chemical sludge are often mixed with negative impacts on sludge management, especially for land application); (ii) the evolution of legislation (landfill disposal is banned in many European countries); and (iii) the technologies for energy and material recovery from sludge not being fully applied in all European Member States. Furthermore, Directive 2018/851/EC introduced the waste hierarchy that involved a new strategy with the prevention in waste production and the minimization of landfill disposal. In this context, biological sewage sludge can be treated in order to produce more stabilized residues: the biosolids. In some European countries, the reuse of biosolids as soil improver/fertilizer in arable crops represents the most used option. In order to control the quality of biosolids used for land application, every Member State has issued a national regulation based on the European directive. The aim of this work is to compare the different approaches provided by European Member States for the reuse of biosolids in agricultural soils. A focus on the regulation of countries that reuse significant amount of biosolids for land application was performed. Finally, a detailed study on Italian legislation both at national and regional levels is reported.
Highlights
During the last 20 years in EU-15, the sewage sludge produced by urban wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) has increased from 6.5 million tDM up to 9.5 million tDM [1]; in EU-28, more than 10 million of tDM of sewage sludge have been produced [2]
The issues concerning the management of sewage sludge produced in wastewater treatment plants are becoming more important in Europe due to: (i) the modification of sludge quality; (ii) the evolution of legislation; and (iii) the technologies for energy and material recovery from sludge not being fully applied in all European Member States
This practice is controlled in different ways at the European level, due to the implementation in the Member States of Directive 86/278/CEE, which allows the reuse on land only for biosolids with a good quality
Summary
During the last 20 years in EU-15, the sewage sludge produced by urban wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) has increased from 6.5 million tDM (dry matter) up to 9.5 million tDM [1]; in EU-28, more than 10 million of tDM of sewage sludge have been produced [2]. The introduction of waste hierarchy, with Directive 2018/851/EC [9], and the opposition of citizens (who perceived sewage sludge as dangerous for human health and for the environment) [10] forced the technicians to re-think completely the sewage sludge management strategy: landfilling was banned, land application was limited, and other routes of recovery are underdeveloped [11,12,13]. This work focuses on the matter recovery, in particular on the reuse of biosolids in agricultural soils
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