Proceedings

Key themes:

• Climate change resilience in bioresource production and use.
• Sludge (Use in Agriculture) Regulations – thirty years on

Oral presentation

According to worldwide policies related to environmental sanitation (such as the Sustainable Development Goals-SDG), biosolids generated in urban wastewater treatment plants must be recycled and reused considering the associated risks of this material in order to minimize environmental, economic and social impacts. As a consequence, several countries have established their own legislation with standards and methods for biosolids management according to pollutants content which vary from country to country in accordance with their level of development. In this work, biosolids legislation, production and management in developed and developing countries worldwide was compared and analysed with the purpose of identifying tendencies and good practices of biosolids management. The comparative analysis was divided in three levels: i) Structure legislation matrix for United States, Canada, European Union, Australia, China and 8 countries from Latin America which involves topics like requirements, technical guidelines, maximum permissible limits (MPL), among others; ii) Biosolids production and management analysis in America, Europe, Asia and Australasia and; iii) MPL scoring matrix for more than 40 countries worldwide. As a result, a relationship between biosolids legislation and management was stablished with the aim of suggest strategies for implementation and improvement of biosolids valorisation.

This paper will explore:

1. Biosolids legislation in America, Europe, Asia and Australasia.
2. Biosolids production and management in America, Europe, Asia and Australasia.
3. Trends in biosolids use worldwide.
4. Maximum permissible limits in more than 40 countries.