Fertilizer effects of composted materials from different sources on cultivating Impatiens balsamina L. in municipal solid waste management

Abstract

At different stages of municipal solid waste management, several technologies such as home composting, industrial composting, and landfill mining could be used to recycle organic matters. Assessing the quality of composted material is crucial for determining where and how for recycling the organic fractions of municipal solid waste (OFMSW). Current studies mainly focused on comparing their biochemical characteristics and environmental impacts; however, comprehensive effects on cultivating plants were rarely compared with composted materials from different sources. Here, the final composting products from home composting (HC), industrial composting (IC), and landfill mining (LM), with different mixing ratios between OFMSW and soil (25, 50, 75, and 100%), were applied for cultivating Impatiens balsamina L. to examine the growing and flowering features under 195 days of observation. We found that all types of composted materials showed positive effects on growth of impatiens; however, their individual profiles were significant different. Generally, compost from HC showed the best comprehensive effects on the plant. Impatiens' dry weight biomass and maximum number of leaves and flowers of HC were1.5 and 2.8 times, 1.1 and 1.6 times, and 1.8 and 4.2 times than those of IC and LM, respectively. Compost from IC was superior in prolonging leaf-growing phase and increasing photosynthesis pigment contents of impatiens. Although comprehensive effect of fine fraction from landfill mining was much lower than HC and IC compost, it still improved impatiens growth and flowering compared to normal sandy soil. The results suggest that direct comprehensive effect on plants growth, flowering, and physiological influences could be introduced as an indicator when we compare different approach to recycle organics from MSW. Comprehensive effect on plants growth, flowering, and physiological influences could be introduced as a direct indicator for assessing organic waste recycling.