IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/recore/v81y2013icp31-39.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Environmental benefits from the use of the residual biomass in nurseries

Author

Listed:
  • Recchia, Lucia
  • Sarri, Daniele
  • Rimediotti, Marco
  • Boncinelli, Paolo
  • Vieri, Marco
  • Cini, Enrico

Abstract

Every year, nurseries waste about 40t of residual biomass for each ha of potted plants cultivation. The European nursery sector deals with about 90,000ha of cultivated land and 120,000ha of nurseries, with a turnover of 19.8 billion Euros in 2011. In recent years, a number of Italian projects highlighted that GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions for the nursery sector range between 37tCO2eq/ha/year and 45tCO2eq/ha/year for potted plants, mainly due to the consumption of electric energy, plastics and peat. Moreover, other studies analyse the impacts associated to nurseries, recommending best practices for energy reductions and waste recycle or reuse. Therefore, the present work focused its attention to the possible environmental benefits associated to the reuse of residues (wood and substrate) of potted plants that are discarded from the nursery production chain. GHG emissions and fossil energy requirement were quantified by considering the CO2eq (CO2 equivalent) and the CER (cumulative energy requirement) respectively, in order to assess the environmental impacts of two different scenarios proposed for the materials recovery. Final results highlighted that the solutions which are able to recover the substrate and the wood allow impact reductions compared to landfill disposal. In particular, the scenario consisting in the immediate separation of the substrate from the root-plant system and the successive chipping of wood for energetic reuse, allows higher savings than those obtainable through shredding and subsequent wind separation. Moreover, for what concerns the CO2eq, an adequate use of the residual biomass make it possible to compensate the GHG emissions of the nurseries up to 15%.

Suggested Citation

  • Recchia, Lucia & Sarri, Daniele & Rimediotti, Marco & Boncinelli, Paolo & Vieri, Marco & Cini, Enrico, 2013. "Environmental benefits from the use of the residual biomass in nurseries," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 31-39.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:recore:v:81:y:2013:i:c:p:31-39
    DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2013.09.010
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344913001912
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.resconrec.2013.09.010?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Boldrin, Alessio & Hartling, Karin R. & Laugen, Maria & Christensen, Thomas H., 2010. "Environmental inventory modelling of the use of compost and peat in growth media preparation," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 54(12), pages 1250-1260.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zhao, Yan & Deng, Wenjing, 2014. "Environmental impacts of different food waste resource technologies and the effects of energy mix," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 214-221.
    2. Manfredi, Simone & Tonini, Davide & Christensen, Thomas H., 2011. "Environmental assessment of different management options for individual waste fractions by means of life-cycle assessment modelling," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 55(11), pages 995-1004.
    3. Ortner, Maria E. & Müller, Wolfgang & Schneider, Irene & Bockreis, Anke, 2016. "Environmental assessment of three different utilization paths of waste cooking oil from households," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 59-67.
    4. Roberto Calisti & Luca Regni & Daniela Pezzolla & Mirko Cucina & Giovanni Gigliotti & Primo Proietti, 2022. "Evaluating Compost from Digestate as a Peat Substitute in Nursery for Olive and Hazelnut Trees," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(1), pages 1-17, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:recore:v:81:y:2013:i:c:p:31-39. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kai Meng (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/resources-conservation-and-recycling .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.