Waste Management Problems in Agro-Industries : Selected Proceedings of the 7th IWA International Symposium on Waste Management Problems in Agro-Industries, Held in Amsterdam RAI, the Netherlands, 27-29 September 2006

The project of establishing a scientific basis for discussing and solving emerging environmental problems in agro-industries has flourishing one over the last two decades. The term agro industries defines a common scientific framework for a significant group of industrial activities based on agricultural means and products, covering a number of major industries such as textiles, pulp and paper, leather, food, sugar, edible oil, beverage, etc. The symposium in Amsterdam provided an effective forum for discussion of the present and future problems, recent experiences and advances in this significant field of environmental management, giving rise to high-quality papers that were fully peer reviewed, with 32 finally being selected for this issue. The concept of waste management has greatly improved over the last twenty years, with outstanding achievements in the understanding of wastewater characteristics and interpretation of biological and physico-chemical processes used for treatment and disposal. There have also been major innovations in waste management directing the focus towards issues like persistent organic pollutants (POPS), resources recovery and reuse, waste minimization, treatment of segregated waste streams, etc. The papers selected for this issue provide genuine insight into current best practice and also set out a basis for significant collaborative research efforts for agro-industries waste management. Selected Papers from the 7th IWA International Symposium on Waste Management Problems in Agro-Industry