Wastes for compost

Compost can also be produced from a variety of other organic wastes. Undeliverable bulk mail has been mixed with food and yard waste for composting.278 Pulp and paper mill sludge can be composted, instead of being put into a landfill.279 Animal waste from chickens, cattle, hogs, or other farm animals, can be composted directly or used in an anaerobic system to produce biogas with compost as a residue.280 (Contamination of water by pig and poultry farms is a problem in Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina,... 

Thermoplastic starch is also blended with other polymers to improve its properties for particular applications. For example, a bag for collection of household food waste for composting that readily dissolved when it got wet would not function very well In applications such as this, the resins used for blending are also biodegradable, so that they do not interfere with the composting operation. In other cases, starch is blended with nonbiodegradable resins such as polyolefins. 

Novamont makes Mater-Bi, another starch-based biodegradable polymer. This material is widely used for bags for collection of organic wastes for composting. Novamont claims programs serving over 15 million people use Mater-Bi bags and carriers for collection of... 

Fig. 3. Materials recovery, composting, combustion, and discards of municipal solid waste from 1969 to 2000 (1995—2000 estimated) as a fraction of total generation, where A represents landfill and other B, combustion C, recovery for recycling and D, recovery for composting.

The Commission is working on establishing end-of-waste criteria for a number of specific recyclable materials including metal scrap of copper, aluminum and iron, waste paper, waste glass, compost, and plastics. Based on the results of two frontrunner studies, ferrous scrap and aluminum scrap in 2010, the first... 

Furthermore zero waste efforts in Brazil to avoid hazardous consequences caused by additives, due to inappropriate handling of waste, are described. The city of Cantagalo is one of the first in Brazil to establish organised separation and treatment of solid wastes for reuse. The separation with proper allocation for coprocessing of the waste not suitable for recycling or composting is a laudable solution from both an environmental and economic standpoint. 

In Germany, 60-70% of the biowastes are collected separately and recycled by composting or digestion, but in the EU-15 countries only 6% and 22% are incinerated, and 72% is landfilled (Kehres 2008). For composting the selective collection of waste is important because of the separation of biowaste. 

An additional 7 percent of biodegradable wastes were recycled in 2005 for composting. That number increased from 0 percent in 1960, 1970, and 1980, and from 2 percent in 1990, the first year in which measurable amounts of biodegradable materials were recycled in the country. 

PAHs from vehicle emissions constitute a minor, but measurable, source of soil PAHs (Table 25.3). The majority of highway-derived PAHs appears to be deposited within 3.8 m of the road, but the influence of the highway may extend to nearly 70 m (Johnston and Harrison 1984). The use of composted muiucipal wastes for conditioning agricultural soils is not recommended, as these contain at least nine identified carcinogeiuc PAHs (Martens 1982). 

The certification programme for compostable biodegradable plastic products has been set up by experts responsible for waste recycling and compost quality assurance. The members are as follows ... 

Collect materials. Good raw materials for compost include garden wastes, grass clippings, kitchen scraps, manure, newspapers, and sawdust. Avoid meat scraps and oils, both of which will attract forasins animals and will... 

Riggle, D. (1989). Revival time for composting food industry wastes. BioCycle 29, 35-37. 

Solid wastes treatment is nowadays very important because, on the one hand, their quantity increases regularly and, on the other hand, their storage in landfills tends to be forbidden. This is particularly true for urban solid wastes. In this frame, the biological treatment of solid wastes, or composting, often associated with biological sludges from... 

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