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Punkalaidun wants to become a nutrient cycling municipality

Punkalaidun is an agriculture and livestock farming intensive municipality located in the Pirkanmaa region, Finland. Municipality of Punkalaidun aims at becoming a sustainable and lively rural economic area with a healthy environment and developing bio sector. In order to support this development, Punkalaidun decided to make a Baltic Sea Commitment.

Farming and meat production create challenges for efficient nutrient usage and cause nutrient leakages to the local water bodies and to the Baltic Sea. To become a forerunner municipality in nutrient cycling and circular economy, Punkalaidun develops its co-operation-model, educates its staff and administration in order to deploy more holistic natural resource and land-use planning procedures and to improve the co-operation between the municipality and companies.

As a part of the Commitment, Punkalaidun will together with its local partners start to produce biogas and recycled fertilizer products. The co-investment creates new business models and processes supporting nutrient cycling, thus decreasing the amount of nutrients leaching into the water bodies.

The Commitment includes research and implementation of new technical solutions, logistics and economic factors for the planned biogas and manufacturing plants.  The manufacturing plant will use local animal manure and other primary productions side streams as input material for its processes.

In addition, Punkalaidun studies with its partners the possible pretreating processes for the manure in order to increase biogas yield and develop new nitrogen recovery methods in the biogas production process.

Commitment by Punkalaidun also includes raising awareness on the importance of good soil condition and sustainable land use by involving municipal citizens in the development. More efficient practices are to be achieved through improved co-operation between the companies and municipal administration.

Moving towards resource efficiency and nutrient cycling needs a long-term approach. By taking advantage of the potential of circular economy, municipality of Punkalaidun will increase its competence in a sustainable way.

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