Although NEBRA has the word “residuals” in its name, biosolids have historically been the focus of most of NEBRA’s efforts. That is until May of 2021, when NEBRA Vice President Lise Leblanc decided it was time to focus on non-biosolids residuals, especially as end markets are growing with focus on reducing the climate impacts of farming practices.  The committee’s charge is to identify opportunities to expand NEBRA’s role in providing expert advice and information in support of programs reusing or recycling waste and by-products. The goal is to make NEBRA the go-to organization for residual opportunities across North America.  What the committee has found so far is that there aren’t other member organizations out there focused on recycling waste residuals. 

Currently, the Residuals Committee has a good core group of members and the first thing they tackled was researching residuals regulations across states and provinces in North America.  With so many residuals materials out there, the group focused its efforts on five:

  1. Wood ash

  2. Pulp and paper

  3. Food and beverage

  4. Inorganics

  5. Hydrosolids (or drinking water residuals)

What the Committee has found so far is that regulations related to various residuals vary from state-to-state and province-to-province. Some are regulated just like biosolids, some like solid waste, others – especially organic residuals – are included in mandatory recycling programs, especially in Canada. 

With the research nearly complete, the Committee has started working on a webpage dedicated to residuals and turning that research into comprehensive state-by-state summaries of regulations with links for more details. The webpage design consists of four main sections:

  1. Benefits (of recycling/reusing residuals)

  2. Research, the latest related to methods and outcomes from reusing residuals in various applications

  3. Regulations, organized into a clickable map to access the summaries/links

  4. Successful Programs, writeups of recycling success stories

This committee of dedicated volunteers has made steady progress towards its goal. You can get a sneak peek at some of the success stories compiled to date: www.nebiosolids.org/successful-programs. The focus on residuals has carried over to other programs for NEBRA members.  For example, there have been several Lunch & Learns webinars related to residuals – like the July 2022 session about chitosan, a polymer made from seafood residuals that can be used in water treatment applications. The recording of that webinar (https://youtu.be/VkzaSwFeOcs) has garnered the most views of any of the videos on NEBRA’s YouTube station, so there’s definitely lots of interest in residuals recycling topics out there.

Despite all the progress the Residuals Committee has made, they could use more hands to help get the regulations summaries done and launch the new webpage.  After that, the Committee plans to spread the word wide-and-far about the resources it has compiled and use those resources to attracts new, different members into NEBRA.

Anyone interested in joining, can email Lise Leblanc or Janine Burke-Wells.