Bio-waste composting as a part of rural development

One of the most serious problems of waste management in Czech Republic is the useful treatment of biodegradable municipal waste because EU Council Directive 1999/31/EC requires of member states to limit the amount of biodegradable waste deposited into landfill. Composting of biodegradable municipal waste can be a solution of this problem but there are many operational and economic problems. This article describes advantages and problems of bio-waste composting in rural conditions (of Czech Republic) at all parts of composting process, i.e. from bio-waste sorting and collection through bio-waste composting to utilization and sale of compost. Bio-waste composting in countryside brings many benefits. The waste is treated at the place of origin and it is possible to get the organic mass of compost back to the field with minimal transport distances. Decentralized waste treatment brings jobs to regions of a small rate of employment. It is necessary to solve many problems related to the process of composting. Quality of input raw material is the first of them. It was found that the amount of undesirable impurities in separately collected biodegradable municipal waste depends on the type of building density and the settlement size. By the measurement of 200 kg samples of sorted bio-waste it was showed that purity of waste sorting is much better in small villages than in rather big cities. Right size of composting plant is another question to discussion. A lot of small composting plants built for several villages allow waste treatment in the place of origin but just a big composting plant is rich enough to have adequate machine equipment. Of course, in this case transport distances are long. Compost selling is connected with other problems. Farmers usually do not want even high-quality compost because of the costs of compost application to the field (although missing of organic mass in the soil). Lots of low-quality compost is used as a reclaim material.