Towards a bio-based circular economy in organic waste management and wastewater treatment - The Polish perspective

Bio-based solutions are expected to ensure technological circularity in priority areas such as agriculture, biotechnology, ecology, green industry or energy. Although Poland, unlike the other EU member states, has not yet adopted a precise political strategy to promote bioeconomy, it has taken several actions to enable smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. This goal can be achieved by developing selected bioeconomy-related areas such as the biogas industry together with novel technologies implemented to optimize treatment of municipal sewage and management of organic solid waste. Here, the relatively strong status of the Polish biogas sector is presented. The widely used practice of sewage sludge biomethanation has led to construction of numerous complex installations combining biological wastewater treatment plants with anaerobic digesters. Based on physico-chemical processing of biostabilized sludges, a novel method for efficient granulated soil fertilizer production is elaborated, in line with the concept of circular economy and the notion of "waste-to-product". It is also shown that anaerobic fermentation of sewage sludges can be optimized by co-digestion with properly selected co-substrates to increase bioprocess yield and improve the resultant digestate fertilizer quality. The problem of post-fermentation eutrophic sludge liquors, environmentally hazardous waste effluents requiring proper treatment prior to discharge or field application, is addressed. Attempts to optimize biological treatment of digestate liquors with complex microbial consortia are presented. The Polish innovations described show that the "zero waste" path in circular bioeconomy may bring advantageous results in terms of transformation of waste materials into commercial, added-value products together with recovery of water resources.