On October 1-2, 2015 an international workshop on Technospheric Mining was held at the Technical University Vienna (TU Wien). Chris Thornton presented the current situation on sustainable phosphorus management in Europe and outlined the progress of EU policies.
He highlighted the recent key development of the proposed EU Circular Economy policy. It is estimated that a circular economy system for food production could cut Europe’s food cost per person by 30%. Bio-nutrients were identified as a priority sector for EU Circular Economy policy by a quarter of respondents to the EU’s 2015 public consultation. ESPP is actively involved in this process, fostering stakeholder input to policy development.
In 2014 phosphate rock was added to the EU List of Critical Raw Materials. Currently there is an updated assessment underway. Chris Thornton pointed out that the assessment should consider not only “phosphate rock”, but also phosphorus in all forms (P) in order to address bio-nutrients and recycling, and also specific forms of phosphorus, in particular White Phosphorus (P4) which is critical for strategic industries (chemicals, fire safety, electronics) and is no longer produced in Europe (100% technological import dependency).
ESPP and its partners are directly involved in a range of current EU regulatory and policy processes:
- EU Fertiliser Regulation recast: taking recovered nutrient products into account and EU criteria development (JRC) for struvite, biomass ashes
- Organic Farming Regulation: proposed validation of recycled P products
- REACH (EU chemicals regulation): Art 2(7)d “recovered” substances, by-products
- BAT BREFs (Industrial Emissions Directive): waste incineration, pig & poultry production
- BEMPs: EMAS (EU Eco-Management and Audit Scheme Regulation) “agriculture”
- EIP-AGRI Focus Group proposal: agronomic use of recovered nutrient products
- EU Critical Raw Materials list: MSA update - Standards: CEN SABE, ISO 275 …
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