Sustainable Natural Materials and Their Importance for Waste Management and Stabilization of Soil Pollution

The use of sustainable natural materials in environmental engineering systems is presented as the second sustainability level of environmental protection technologies. This chapter focuses on employing such materials in the stabilization of soil pollution and waste management, explores biochar produced from various kinds of waste materials containing potentially toxic elements (e.g. sewage sludge and waste from paper manufacturing), deals with a comparative analysis of its properties, presents research into the stability of potentially toxic elements found in biochar, evaluates environmental risk and discusses the results of investigating the use of biochar for stabilizing metallic elements in the polluted soils and the effect of biochar on the bioavailability of these elements in the soil.