ORBIT 2010 - The ORBIT 2010 Conference

As concerns over Climate Change continue to grow, the management of a major resource, namely organic waste and residues, in the context of the carbon economy, has been selected as the focal point for ORBIT 2010. In global terms organic residues constitute the single largest waste stream. Our aspiration towards a “Recycling Society”, recently re-affirmed in the EU Waste Framework Directive, can never be achieved without the extensive and innovative recovery of organic resources. Moreover, deep understanding and smart management of the life-cycle of organic resources is essential for climate change mitigation.

Following the tradition of its predecessors, the 7th ORBIT Conference will deal with all aspects of recovery of many different organic residues: from waste prevention and decoupling, to beneficial recycling of compost and digestate into the soil and energy recovery as methane and hydrogen. The traditional themes of composting and anaerobic digestion ? processes, technologies, product quality, and the role of organic matter in combating desertification ? remain central to our thinking and we are far from fully understanding how they act and interact. Moreover, new issues emerge, such as the multifaceted and challenging topic of sustainable energy recovery from biomass and the role of soil and carbon sequestration in climate change. The Conference will present high quality, innovative research in all the aforementioned topics, as well as pilot-plant and full-scale experiences and workshops for practitioners on hot topics of organic resources management.

Read more...

Organisation & Committees
Organisation
The conference will be organised in a series of thematically ordered parallel sessions. Each contribution to the conference will be evaluated by three members of the Scientific Committee in order to ensure a high level of scientific and/or practical quality and relevance. All contributions accepted will be assigned to a specific session. All contributions accepted for publication and presented at the conference will be included in the official conference proceedings of ORBIT 2010.

As a new feature, ORBIT 2010 will be supplemented by workshops organised by the European Composting Network (ECN), for the practitioners in biological waste management and resource utilisation in Europe.

Selected high quality and original contributions will be published in special issues of the Global NEST Journal, the Journal of Environmental Science and Health and Waste Management & Research

- Organic waste prevention and decoupling
- Separate collection & public involvement
- Composting, anaerobic digestion and biological hydrogen production
- Compost and digestate quality
- Energy recovery from biomass
- Biogas and upgrading to biofuels
- Process control
- Mechanical-Biological Treatment: technologies, products and landfill diversion potential
- Facility impacts on the environment
- Quantifying benefits & risks of compost/digestate/sludge use
- Management of specific organic waste-streams (sewage sludge, manures, agricultural residues, etc)
- Soil, carbon sequestration and climate change
- Organic waste and climate change
- Economic, environmental and social assessment of organic waste management options (LCA, risk assessment, sustainability assessment etc)
- Decision making, legislation and education
- EU policies & strategies for sustainable organic waste management
- Strategies and concepts for the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe Region
- Developing countries issues
- Case-studies and success stories