BIODEGRADABLE WASTE TREATMENT WITH ADDITIVE BASED COMPOSTING : A REVIEW

The Growing world population and the resulting higher consumption of products and services has driven a rapid increase of organic wastes originating from households, industry and agriculture. This situation generates serious environmental issues, calling for safe and sustainable strategies to treat these wastes, from their production to their recycling or elimination. On the other hand, the organic fraction of wastes represents a valuable organic resource, which could be recycled and transformed into nutrient-rich fertilizer and/or soil conditioner. Biological degradation during composting is one of the strategies to transform organic wastes into organic products. Composting is a time consuming process 1 including degradation of waste by the microbial population converting them into a stable organic fertilizer. Hence, a considerable research in the field of rapid composting is to be done so as to accelerate the composting process. The different authors had discussed the methodologies used previously and gave outline of some modified technologies. This review is summarized from study of literature regarding composting process highlighted in various journals, papers, relevant text books, relevant websites and proceedings of national and international conferences. It describes the best and optimum additives as well as techniques enhancing the composting process by reducing the period of composting and hence achieving rapid composting. The purpose of this review is to get an overview of current approaches related with rapid composting and other treatment techniques which were used for normal composting so that various suitable techniques can be merged in combination in order to generate a new technique which will be beneficial for reducing the duration of composting.