“Over the years we’ve invested significantly in our field data team - focusing on producing trusted ratings. While this ensures the accuracy of our Ratings, it doesn’t allow the scale across the thousands of projects that buyers are considering.”
For more information on carbon credit procurement trends, read our "Key Takeaways for 2025" article. We share five, data-backed tips to improve your procurement strategy.
One more thing: Connect to Supply customers also get access to the rest of Sylvera's tools. That means you can easily see project ratings and evaluate an individual project's strengths, procure quality carbon credits, and even monitor project activity (particularly if you’ve invested at the pre-issuance stage.)
Book a free demo of Sylvera to see our platform's procurement and reporting features in action.
Organic Waste Is a Circular Opportunity, But Not a Simple One
Organic waste is a significant waste stream across many industrial sectors — like agri-food production, agriculture, horticultural, and fruit- and vegetable-packing facilities. These activities produce plant-based residues such as crop trimmings, peelings, spent grains, whey, and spoiled or excess produce. When clean and well managed, these organic materials are highly valuable: they can become animal feed, packaging fibres, compost or renewable energy.
However, organic waste is also sensitive. Small contaminants can ruin composting or digestion batches, invasive species can spread through compost, and limited digestion capacity can force high-value material into lower-value treatment. If organic waste is handled incorrectly or contaminated with inorganic materials, it often cannot be safely reused, composted or digested. It then has to be incinerated with energy recovery — a shame, given the high nutrient and material value these organic streams could have delivered.
Most companies already reuse or recycle a large share of their organic waste. The challenge is doing it safely and correctly — with clean streams, the right treatment route, and accurate data. Below are four key things to keep in mind when managing organic waste in the agri-food sector.
1. Organic Waste Is Extremely Sensitive to Contamination
Keeping organic waste free from contaminants is essential for preserving its circular potential. Even small amounts of inorganic material can change how a stream can be treated and whether it retains its circular value.
Take something as simple as the plastic ties used in greenhouses to support tomato plants. On their own, they seem insignificant. But once mixed into plant trimmings or crop residues, they can prevent a stream from being reused directly (for example as animal feed) and force it into lower-value treatment. In many cases, a batch that could have been directly reused ends up suitable only for composting, or is rejected entirely because plastics could damage equipment or end up as contaminants in soil. The same issue appears with fruit stickers, bits of film from packaging, elastic bands, broken clips, and other small items that easily slip into organic bins.
For many companies with organic waste, the challenge is maintaining that purity across busy production or work environments. Preventing contamination requires awareness of where it tends to occur, and action to either move from plastic ties to biodegradable ties or to introduce clear sorting rules.
2. Managing Invasive Species Within Organic Waste Streams
While most plant-based materials can be composted, digested or repurposed, certain biological materials need far more careful handling. Invasive plant species are a clear example. They can easily slip into green-waste streams if they aren’t identified and separated correctly and if they do cause a lot of harm.
Take Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica). It’s highly invasive and capable of spreading from even the smallest fragments of root or stem. If it’s mixed into regular plant waste and sent for composting, there’s a real risk that viable material ends up in the final compost — unintentionally spreading the species further.
Part of the problem is that invasive species don’t always show up clearly in documentation. They’re often collected under broad green-waste categories or generic waste codes, which means processors may not immediately recognise what they’re receiving. In other cases, a processor may decide to incinerate the load because it contains invasive species. That decision is operationally correct — but if your data simply shows a spike in “burned organic waste” without context, it can raise difficult questions later when analysing trends or waste management performance.
For businesses, the solution is straightforward but essential: ensure correct identification, use accurate waste coding, and maintain clear communication with processors so these materials never end up in the wrong treatment route.
3. Composting vs. Anaerobic Digestion: When the Waste Hierarchy Doesn’t Tell the Full Story
For organic material, anaerobic digestion is considered a good treatment route. It produces both biogas (a renewable energy source) and digestate, which can return nutrients to soils and reduce the need for synthetic fertilisers. In many cases, digestion offers the highest combined environmental and circular value.
Yet under the EU waste hierarchy, composting is classified as “recycling,” while anaerobic digestion is labelled as “recovery.” On paper, composting sits higher in the waste processing hierarchy - indicating that it's seen as a better process. However, in practice, anaerobic digestion generates energy, preserves nutrients, and reduces greenhouse-gas emissions more effectively than composting.
Even when companies prefer anaerobic digestion over composting, capacity constraints can stand in the way. In regions like the Netherlands, anaerobic digestion facilities are often operating close to full capacity, and the volume of available organic waste far exceeds what digesters can process. As a result, high-quality organic material that could have been digested is often diverted to composting simply because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Understanding this nuance is crucial for companies in analysing their waste performance. geoFluxus adds value by offering performance benchmarking across sites, helping teams understand whether changes come from contamination, capacity limits, or true improvements. A sudden increase in composting might not necessarily indicate better performance in terms of circularity.
4. Organic Waste Is Often Misreported Due to Data Fragmentation
Even when organic waste streams are clean and correctly sorted, reporting them accurately can still be surprisingly difficult. Organic waste moves through several contractors and processors, and the information attached to it can become incomplete, inconsistent or too general to be useful.
A lot of this confusion comes from gaps in the data itself. Organic streams are often recorded under broad “green waste” codes that don’t reflect what the material actually contains or needs. And when processors divert a load — whether due to contamination, invasive species or limited capacity — those reasons rarely make it back into your system. The result is treatment outcomes that don’t match expectations and disposal figures that appear unexplained, even when the underlying decision was valid.
Inconsistent or incomplete reporting such as missing treatment data, mismatched waste codes or documentation gaps creates blind spots for organisations. These gaps make it difficult to quantify how much organic waste was actually reused, how much contributed to nutrient cycles, or how much environmental impact was avoided through composting or digestion. Much of this confusion comes from gaps in the data itself. Platforms like geoFluxus automate and verify waste data so organisations can see exactly how and why treatment decisions were made.
Conclusion — Organic Waste Deserves More Attention Than It Gets
Organic waste should be one of the easiest streams to keep circular, but as reality shows, its performance depends on how precisely you manage it — keeping materials clean, separating risk-sensitive batches, choosing the right treatment route, and understanding why certain decisions are made at the processor level.
Small details often have big consequences: a handful of plastic ties can downgrade an entire load; a hidden invasive plant can force incineration; a regional capacity shortage can push high-value material into composting. Without the right data, these operational realities disappear from your reporting — leaving gaps you cannot explain and circular value you cannot prove.
Getting organic waste right requires transparent routing, complete datasets, and a clear line of sight from the point of generation to the final treatment outcome. When companies understand not just what happened, but why, they can protect the material value of their organic streams, reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, and demonstrate credible performance.
This is where geoFluxus helps: by verifying waste flows, clarifying treatment decisions, and creating audit-ready reporting that reflects what truly happens on the ground.
If you want to see how clean, accurate organic waste data can unlock real circular impact across your operations→ Book a demo
FAQs
What does agricultural waste refer to?
Agricultural waste refers to the organic and inorganic materials generated during agricultural operations and food production — from crop residues, animal manure, and food waste to packaging materials and chemical waste generated at agricultural sites. These waste materials can be valuable resources when managed and processed responsibly. Effective agricultural waste management has the potential to increase soil fertility, avoid soil contamination, and improves long-term environmental sustainability across the agricultural sector.
How can agri-food companies reduce agricultural waste and keep organic materials in the circular economy?
The most effective strategies for how to reduce agricultural waste start with good separation of organic and inorganic materials. Once streams are separated, companies can transform agricultural waste into animal feed, nutrient-rich compost, directly reuse in new products, or use it as a renewable energy source. Reuse of crop residues, excess produce and nutrient-rich by-products helps reduce reliance on synthetic fertilizers, lowers dependence on fossil fuels, thereby supporting sustainable practices required for a circular economy.
Why is contamination such a challenge in managing agricultural waste?
When organic waste becomes mixed with inorganic materials or harmful chemicals, it can no longer be safely recycled. Contamination prevents composting, reduces material quality, and can introduce unwanted plant material or invasive species into treatment processes. As a result, contaminated organic waste is often diverted to disposal routes such as incineration, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and eliminating the opportunity to turn these nutrient-rich materials into valuable secondary resources. Clean, well-separated streams are essential for responsible waste management and for keeping organic waste in high-value circular loops.
What are the environmental impacts of improper agricultural waste disposal?
Improper disposal of organic materials such as animal manure, crop residues and spoiled or excess produce can lead to uncontrolled decomposition, which generates methane — a potent greenhouse gas. Poorly managed manure or digestate can cause nutrient runoff, contributing to water pollution, harmful algal blooms and long-term damage to aquatic ecosystems. Burning crop residues releases carbon dioxide and particulate matter, worsening air pollution and accelerating climate change. Mismanaged agricultural waste can also degrade soil health, spread pathogens or residues into waterways, and pose risks to human health. By contrast, responsible waste management practices help protect soils, support plant growth and improve environmental sustainability across the agricultural sector.
What role do data and tracking play in managing agricultural waste responsibly?
Clear data on waste generation, treatment routes and contamination is essential for understanding where waste management is working well — and where valuable materials are being downgraded into low-value disposal. Without accurate tracking, organic loads may show up as “incinerated” without context, or streams suitable for reuse may be lost due to misclassification or missing information. Reliable data enables responsible waste management, supports regulatory reporting, and helps identify which agricultural waste streams can be safely reused, composted, digested or diverted into higher-value recycling pathways.
