Growing media manufacturing from fluvial sediments and green wastes following E.U Ecolabel framework
Résumé
To maintain their economic activities, inland parts, rivers and canals have to be dredged. In French legislation, dredged sediments have to be managed onshore when their environmental characteristics, i.e. trace element and organics concentrations, are suggesting it. In this case, dredged sediment are considered as waste and their reuse as secondary aggregates for agronomic products is allowed under some conditions. These conditions include checking the sediment is not hazardous and the new product will not cause environmental and sanitary risks, hi this context, the European Union Ecolabel framework establishes environmental, technical, and economics criteria for waste reusing as glowing media for plants in landscaping. In this research, dredged sediments from French waterways are reused as aggregates in the preparation of glowing media according to the rules of E.U ECOLABEL. Given their organic matter and nutrient contents, dredged sediments are relevant for manufacturing growing media. Addition of composted green waste residues and construction demolition wastes aggregates followed by sufficient tillage time allowed obtaining glowing media for non-food purposes in compliance with ecolabel and legislation requirements. Also, besides the agronomic parameters, environmental characteristics of agronomic products were studied through leaching tests in order to check their conformity. © 2018, Centro de Ciencias de la Atmosfera, UNAM. All rights reserved.