Why is certification necessary?
Biofertilisers produced in the anaerobic digestion process can be a useful, cost-effective and sustainable source of soil nutrients.
However, their use on the land needs to be regulated to ensure that the public, farmers, food producers and end retailers can have confidence in the safety of the process.
Where digestate is produced to the British Standards Institution's Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 110 quality standard everyone can have confidence that its use as biofertiliser is safe and has been checked by an approved body.
OF&G provides the inspection and certification of biofertiliser to PAS 110 and the Quality Digestate Protocol under the Biofertiliser Certification Scheme (BCS). This is done on behalf of Renewable Energy Assurance Ltd, a subsidiary of the Renewable Energy Association.
To achieve successful certification, facilities producing the digestate will need to meet the requirements of the BCS with regard to inputs, processes and the biofertiliser produced.
The benefits of going through this process are that the digestate resulting from anaerobic digestion can safely be used by farmers as a good source of sustainable fertiliser.
The Biofertilier Certification Scheme website states:
The PAS110 for digestate, derived from the anaerobic digestion of source-segregated biodegradable materials creates an industry specification against which producers can verify that the digested materials are of consistent quality and fit for purpose. If a biogas plant meets the standard, its digestate will be regarded as having been fully recovered and to have ceased to be waste, and it can be despatched to the customer under the symbol “Bio-fertiliser”.