Digestate Fertiliser Regulations Needed for Anaerobic Digestion Throughout Europe

Consistent digestate fertiliser regulations are urgently needed for Anaerobic Digestion to thrive throughout Europe. Without them selling sustainable, low carbon emissions digestate derived fertiliser will continue to be held back.

Under the current legislative regulation on the use of digestate in the EU, the digestate is considered as waste in most of the EU Member States. 

The result of that is that to sell digestate fertiliser outside the farm it is produced is a painful exercise, and very few producers put their digestate on the market as fertiliser.

Digestate is a really good fertiliser, and it holds interesting benefits over chemical fertilisers, but there are some real concerns to be resolved before the regulatory bodies can allow it to be placed on the market. 

This is why we make a plea for the EU bodies responsible to act and as rapidly as possible issue new regulations for all fertilisers to harmonise the situation in the EU. 

The EU regulators need to get together a project and regulate digestate fertiliser EU wide, through the Fertiliser Regulations.

Fertiliser Regulations are an important piece of legislation which should be revised to involve, among others, the sale of digestate as fertilising material, providing conditions are met to ensure the quality of the fertiliser products and their safety against spreading any infectious diseases they might spread if they are not properly pasteurised.

For this the EU Law needs to change the status of anaerobic digestion digestate from being classed as a "waste", to being classed as a product. That is from a so-called "waste" to it being seen as a valuable raw material to be used for fertilising and soil improvement generally.

This is the first step. The second step is that digestate contains manure.

Manure is generally considered to be an Animal By-product (ABP), and the new Fertiliser Regulations need to change the status of Animal By-product to allow it to become fertiliser.

The spokesperson in the video above said:

"We are working on the integration of all these existing pieces of legislation into one, which will be the fertiliser regulation. And the purpose of my talk today was to present this aspect of the integration of several pieces of legislation into one, which will be helpful for the digestate producer and this will actually be a way to also make money out of the digestate by placing this useful fertilising method on the market."

"Which countries in Europe are the best from this point of view?"

"Well, the most active countries that we have are typically Germany but also France, as they think about changing the legal status of this digestate and that is why we get inspiration to harmonise this at a European level."

"This is really important because we want to create a level playing field for this digestive derived fertiliser compared to the mineral fertiliser."

"We buy and manufacture the mineral fertilisers, they are very important [to reduce] for their high carbon footprint, which is detrimental to the environment."

It is better to use the resources we already have in our biogas plants. After all, we are living on the biogas resource, producing energy first, but now we must also start using the digestate as the great fertiliser it can be.

This is also a great way to integrate farming practices into a circular economy. It is a way to increase recycling, and to transform the farmer as a real actor of the new circular economy.