With the increasing world population, agriculture is intensified to guarantee the food supply sufficiency. This accelerates the decrease of soil organic matter (SOM) content in agricultural soils worldwide, which is undesirable since SOM contributes considerably to numerous soil ecosystem services. Urban organic waste is produced in large amounts on daily basis. These residues contain organic matter (OM) with a great potential to amend losses in soil organic matter when properly applied. However, nowadays most of the organic matter in urban organic residues is not reusable due to improper management practices. To improve the reusability of OM in urban organic waste on soil, an in-depth understanding of the life-cycle OM dynamics for urban organic residues is needed. The correlation between the quality of the organic residue (namely the type of OM, presence of contaminants, etc.), the choice of treatment technologies and the appropriate scale of potential reuse is complex and still poorly understood. The proposed project aims to elucidate this relationship, find out the obstacles that hinder the recycling process and identify the optimal solution/application.
To start with, this research investigates the state of the art of OM—both in the soil and in urban organic residues. Then, based on the results, the obstacles that hinder the recovery and reuse of OM from urban organic residues are explored. Thirdly, several strategies to overcome the obstacles and optimize the OM efficiency will be developed. Lastly, the proposed strategies are evaluated based on their environmental impact, social implication and economic performance.