Rural Biowaste Management: Lessons from Bio Blue for CORE
Managing municipal organic wastes in rural areas presents both environmental and economic challenges and opportunities. The CORE project responds to this by seeking to either prevent bio-waste or improve its selective collection and/or (local) processing to quality compost and other useful circular products such as digestate and biogas/biomethane. Bio Blue, a company in Ypres (B) and member of Vlaco, provides an interesting example of how these principles can be put into practice.
Bio Blue converts biowaste into mainly biomethane and compost, offering both an environmentally friendly and economically viable biowaste management solution. Using biowaste from households and the food industry, Bio Blue creates products such as digestate, compost and biogas/biomethane. This process, monitored by Vlaco, an organization dedicated to closing the biological cycle, can be considered a practical example for other regions, including rural areas that the CORE project aims to reach.
Bio Blue centralizes several types of biowaste including vfg waste, green waste, manure and other agro-industrial types of biowaste. The company anaerobically digests the biowaste before further processing the resulting digestate (solid fraction) along with vfg waste and green waste into compost. Compost is thus an end product of the biological cycle and more importantly an excellent soil improver. This compost can than serve to bring back carbon and nutrients to both agricultural soils and soils from parks, public spaces and gardens. In all of these soils, and especially in agriculture, the production and use of compost can play a major role in regenerating soils, which often suffer from declining organic matter. The use of compost can also reduce reliance on chemical fertilizers.
In addition to compost, Bio Blue also produces biogas or biomethane (upgraded biogas), a clean and renewable alternative to fossil fuels. This biomethane is injected by Bio Blue on the natural gas grid and can then be used as a transportation fuel, for heat and electricity production or as a raw material for the chemical industry. For (rural) communities in CORE partner regions, producing compost and biogas and/or biomethane from organic waste could be a viable scenario too. With this, communities can not only meet their own energy needs, but also contribute to the broader circular economy and the fight against climate change. Another important aspect of Bio Blue's operation is the quality control and certification of their products, which are executed by Vlaco. Bio Blue's compost and biomethane meet strict quality standards, which allows the company to realize interesting prices and added value on the compost and natural gas markets.
The transition to a circular economy is feasible and necessary in both urban and more sparsely populated areas. By promoting good practices and examples, such as Bio Blue, Vlaco and other CORE-members attempt to mutually inspire each other as well as Europe’s rural regions in general. Thereby helping to better manage biowaste streams and to increase regions’ self-sufficiency in supplying both energy and organic (soil) amendments.
If you're interested in learning more about this topic, PlattelandsTV recently released a short film on biowaste processing at BioBlue, highlighting biomethane and compost production.