Future Concepts of Sewage Sludge Management

The traditional way of sewage sludge disposal has always been agriculture, being the residue of civil waste water treatment a natural fertilizer. The up-coming presence in sewage water of heavy metals, especially in high industrialized regions, brought up the problem of soil contamination, hence the sludge with high metals content was disposed in landfills or thermal treatment plants.

In recent years other contaminants have caused apprehension, i.e. organic pollutants, including drugs and hormones, which can enter into the food chain, or pathogenic germs like BSE. The long term consequences of these micro pollutants to environment and human health are not yet clearly determined, hence political decision makers have introduced or think to introduce new regulations.

The result of above situation is an evolution in the methods of sludge disposal, still ongoing and by far not yet settled in the majority of European countries, with restrictions of the use in agriculture and a tendency to thermal treatments. The aim of this article is to show possible solutions to this problem and the experience gathered in cases where they have been applied.

 

 

Hochlauf der Wasserstoffwirtschaft
© Lexxion Verlagsgesellschaft mbH (8/2024)
Überblick über und Diskussion der Maßnahmen zum beschleunigten Ausbau der Wasserstoffinfrastruktur in Deutschland

Die innerstaatliche Umsetzung des Pariser Klimaschutzübereinkommens - ein Rechtsvergleich
© Lexxion Verlagsgesellschaft mbH (8/2024)
Like all public international law treaties, the Paris Climate Accords rely on national law for their implementation. The success of the agreement therefore depends, to a large extent, on the stepstaken or not taken by national governments and legislators as well as on the instruments and mechanisms chosen for this task. Against this background, the present article compares different approaches to the implementation of the Paris Agreement, using court decisions as a means to assess their (legal) effectiveness.

Klimaschutzrecht und Erzeugung erneuerbarer Energien in der Schweiz
© Lexxion Verlagsgesellschaft mbH (8/2024)
Verschachtelte Gesetzgebung unter politischer Ungewissheit

 

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