The special issue on ‘International Conference on Sustainable Solid Waste Treatments and Managements (SWTM-2019)’

Abstract

Solid organic waste (SOW) treatment and disposal is a major global challenge for sustainable societies, where landfilling is still the dominant way of SOW disposal. On the other hand, the global concern on the complexity of waste and greenhouse gas emissions as well as global warming potential, the escalating loss of our biological resources as well as social aspects of contamination of lands and groundwater by, e.g., landfill leachates, demands alternative bioengineer technology that can reutilize these SOW as resources. Among the current available methods, bioprocesses such as anaerobic digestion and composting together have a considerable share of SOW recycling to produce bioenergy, biomass and other bio-products that can reduce the exhaustion of our precious natural resources. Yet the innovative bioengineered technologies to be developed logically should be effective and economically competitive with those production technologies using natural resources, because often the economic viability dictates the fate of the application of a particular technology and significantly influences their sustainability.