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BIOLOGICAL HAZARDS IN COMPOSTING

Jaroslav Kucerova

Abstract

In EU countries, it is currently enacted to separate all recyclable and compostable elements of municipal waste. The products of composting biodegradable fractions of municipal waste are finally used in agriculture and horticulture depending on their quality and maturity. When disposing biodegradable municipal waste (hereinafter BDMW), it is always necessary to keep in view that its decomposition is assisted by a wide scale of various organisms out of which some may be a reason of occurrence of serious biological hazards. This issue and its solution of the necessary sanitization has its undoubtable meaning which will show increasing tendency depending on the enlarging proportion of the sorted waste collection BDMW, its suitable recycling and composting. Specialized literature characterizes a wide scale of biohazards during composting organic fraction of municipal waste. All such works accentuate main advantages of this option for managing and using BDMW, such as decreasing the volume of disposed and incinerated waste, utilizing useful organic matter as fertilizer and also as a possibility to create new job opportunities. On the other hand, the most severe disadvantages of biological waste processing include e.g. unpleasant odours, noise, occurrence of bugs, emissions of aerosol organic dust containing bacteria or fungal spores and a possibility of such pollutants unwantedly entering food chain. The contribution deals with characterization of possible biological hazards during disposing and processing various types of biodegradable municipal waste.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgem2017/52/s20.014

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