Considerations About European Directives and Italian Regulation on Sludge from Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plants: Current Status and Future Prospective

This work reports some reflections about the European and Italian regulation on sewage sludge. In Europe, the progressive augment of the production of sludge from municipal wastewater treatment plants has recently led to a growing attention about management of this type of solid matrix. European Directives and Italian guidelines stimulated reuse of sewage sludge on agricultural soils or in composting factories encouraging the restitution to the biogeochemical natural cycles of recovered material. Nevertheless current Italian law on wastes suggests that sewage sludge must be subjected to the general regulation of waste and sometime public opinion suspect about the sludge recovery practice prevails on the convincement concerning a more convenient waste man-