Presentation

The DECISIVE project – A DECentralised management Scheme for Innovative Valorisation of urban biowastE – aimed to help with the reform of urban waste management systems for our ever-growing cities and populations. 

Project co-funded by the European Commission, under the Horizon 2020 programme. 2016 - 2020

THE PROJECT

This project aimed to alter the current urban metabolism for organic matter, energy and biowaste, to a more circular economic model and to assess the impacts of these changes on the whole waste management cycle.

The project thus contributed to change the management of urban organic material fluxes from a linear paradigm (import of goods without thoughtful interaction between external, peri- and intra-urban area, consumption, external disposal of waste) to a circular paradigm. It helped moving waste management towards a "Zero-Waste" strategy and to achieve the objectives of the European Resource Efficiency Roadmap.

Activities

The objective of the DECISIVE project was to demonstrate the ability to decrease the generation of urban waste (from household or assimilated) and increase recycling and recovery by focusing efforts on decentralised management and valorisation of the organic fraction of waste, i.e. biowaste, in a short cycle.

The consortium developed new processes allowing to treat municipal bio-waste in urban and peri-urban context, namely micro-scale anaerobic digestion units allowing to treat the bio-waste production of a district and solid stade fermentation plants to produce valuable bioproducts out of the micro-AD’s digestate.

Partners

DECISIVE’s project coordinator was Irstea (Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies pour l’environnement et agriculture, FR) and its project partners were:

• Aeris, Aeris Tecnologías Ambientales S.L. (ES)
• ARC*, Agencia de Residus de Catalunya (ES)
• AU, Aarhus Universitet (DK)
• ENT*, Fundació ENT (ES)
• GEOMAR, Helmholtz Zentrum Fur Ozeanforschung Kiel (DE)
• ACR+, Association of Cities and Regions for Sustainable Resource Management (BE)
• ITS, Innovative Technological Systems SRL (IT)
• PSUtec, PSUtec SPRL (BE)
• Refarmers (FR)
• SE*, SUEZ Environnement (FR)
• TUHH, Technische Universitaet Hamburg-Harburg (DE)
• UAB, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (ES)

* ACR+ member