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Four-country initiative on high-quality composts

Expert meeting initiated by the Federal Environment Ministry, together with Austria, Spain and Portugal, for increased biowaste collection in Europe, 31 May/1 June 2006 in Brussels

In ecological terms, compost and fermentation residues from separately collected biowastes have tangible advantages. This applies both to so-called "home composting", i.e. composting on an individual's own property and to the centralised collection and processing of biowastes collected e.g. via the bio bin. There is support for the recycling of unmixed biowastes not only in the Federal Republic of Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Belgium, but also increasingly in southern and eastern EU Member States.

However, composts can be produced from mixed wastes ("mixed waste composts") as well as from separately collected biowastes ("biowaste composts"). Biowaste composts have a considerably lower pollutant content than mixed waste composts. In order to protect soils from unnecessary pollutant inputs only high-quality biowaste composts should be spread on land – especially on land used for the cultivation of agricultural produce. The initiative of the four Member States Spain, Portugal, Austria and Germany aims to win support for this approach from the EU Commission and the other Member States.

In order to generate an exchange of opinion on this topic and coordinate further procedure among the Commission, Member States, associations and the scientific community, the four countries named above organised an expert meeting in Brussels on 31 May/1 June 2006.