Would you buy vegetables grown with fertiliser made from wastewater or other waste streams? 🌱
That question sat at the heart of our workshop “Closing the Loop – Biofertilisers from Waste and Wastewater”, which we hosted on 7 September at the Kleine Stadtfarm in Vienna as part of ReLEAF Project EU.
Researchers, compost and wastewater experts, formulation specialists, agricultural advisors and practitioners spent the day with us, from talks to open discussion, hands-on hardware and a co-creation session.
🎤Our speakers Thomas Ertl (BOKU), Bernhard Koch (BOKU Center for Bioeconomy) and Annemarie Nowak (MA 48, City of Vienna) framed the topic from the perspectives of research, bioeconomy and municipal waste management.
🍄 On the farm tour, we demonstrated the ReLEAF bioreactor. Vegetable scraps from the farm and wood chips become the substrate for Trichoderma harzianum, a beneficial soil fungus grown by solid-state fermentation. The dried fungal biomass then goes to our project partners, who turn it into new bio-based fertiliser products.
☕ In a World Café, we asked what bio-based fertilisers need to become the new normal. What stayed with us:
→ Trust is the bottleneck, not technology. Safety came up again and again: contaminants, hygiene, quality control.
→ Feedstock shapes perception. Compost feels familiar, products from sewage sludge or urine need far more explanation.
→ Farmers decide on price and proven performance under real field conditions.
→ Logistics and infrastructure determine whether local residues can actually be used locally.
These insights feed directly into our social acceptance research within ReLEAF. It was also great to welcome Cambium from Fehring, our partner in the GEORGIA EU Project, and connect two of our EU projects in one room.
Thank you to all participants and our speakers! 💚
#ReLEAF #BioBasedFertilisers #CircularEconomy #Bioeconomy #HorizonEurope
