Project Background

LIFE LIVE-WASTE is subject to co-finance by LIFE+ EU financial instrument under the thematic area of LIFE+ Environmental Policy and Governance in the priority area with principle objective of Waste and Natural Resources. The main objective of project is to develop, demonstrate and evaluate an innovative decentralized approach for sustainable management of livestock waste achieving environmental protection and climate change mitigation in line with the requirements of the EU and National legislation through actions complementary to those of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme. The project activities introduce high level of innovation concerning the development, operation and evaluation of a prototype system for livestock treatment and for the post-treatment of the by-products derived from the involved processes (combination of advanced biological and chemical treatment processes), resulting in recovery of materials and energy and developing a concrete market for the end products (i.e. energy, compost, reusable effluent, phosphorous). Furthermore, innovative assessment methodologies and tools developed and demonstrated for the evaluation of the applied livestock waste management scheme. The project provide insight on how the sustainable livestock waste scheme can be implemented in larger scale in Cyprus, Italy, Greece, Spain and in other EU countries.

The objectives of LIVE WASTE project are: - to develop, demonstrate, optimize and evaluate an innovative, combined system for the treatment of livestock waste in order to standardize an integrated approach, in which livestock manure becomes a source of energy (through anaerobic digestion), nutrients (recovery of phosphorous from liquid part of digestate) soil fertilizer (production of compost from the solid part of digestate) and reusable effluent (through biological treatment of the anaerobic supernatant by the SBR) - to develop the baseline scenario on the existing livestock waste management in Cyprus and in Europe – to minimize the environmental disturbance resulting from the production, treatment and disposal of livestock waste and to reduce the resulting greenhouse gas emissions - to minimize the odours produced during the various treatment processes through the development and integration of an innovative odour abatement system - to introduce high level of technical innovation related to low carbon-footprint livestock waste management - to recover materials and energy from livestock waste and to produce reusable effluent - to provide guidelines for the wider application of the integrated system - to develop and disseminate a strategic plan on sustainable decentralized livestock waste management in line with the EU and National legislation - to develop and identify concrete market opportunities for the end products - to develop & demonstrate an innovative assessment tool integrating the principles of LCA, cost-benefit analysis and the current legislative framework for the evaluation the system performance and its end-products quality - to verify the agreement of compost and/or digestate with the end-of waste criteria; the effluent quality with the reuse criteria - to improve the attractiveness of the regions by applying state-of-the art waste management schemes – to effectively disseminate the project findings. The developed prototype system will treat approximately 90-100 tonnes of livestock waster per year providing biogas for energy purposes, treated water and compost for reuse/application in agriculture.