Background After Italy, Spain is the EU’s leading rice producer. It has 94000 hectares dedicated to this crop, with yields that are amongst the highest in the world. The Spanish rice-growing area is distributed mainly amongst the provinces of Seville, Tarragona and Valencia, the latter accounting for 40 percent of total national production. Valencia must also pay special attention to the use of growing cultures that respect the environment, as most of the area where rice is cultivated is within the boundaries of the Albufera National Park. At present, the Valencian Region dedicates 16534 hectares to growing rice of which 16000 are in the actual province of Valencia, which has an annual production of some 90000 tonnes of rice straw. Most of this is incinerated within the same growing area. There are 322 water purification plants in the Valencia Region and these generate 350294 tonnes of mud each year. These muds are mostly dispersed to controlled tips but this is an increasingly limited option. Currently, there are no installations for making use of this waste in such a way as to guarantee compliance with current and future legislation in the short term, and which guarantee its proper use and/or minimises the need for it to be tipped or incinerated. Objectives The project aimed to: - Establish an operational system for collecting rice straw that solves the current problems that make this non-viable. - Provide an overall and sustained solution to two current problems: the incineration of the rice straw following its harvest, and the direct application of the muds in agriculture or their deposit in tips. - Comply with the objectives set out by the E.U. Council (Community Directive 91/156/EEC, Communication 96/399), which gives priority to the re-use, recycling and valuing the waste under other management techniques. Results The project development has achieved the objectives outlined: a new system to collect rice straw from muddy plots has been developed. Moreover, the composting process using a mixture of rice straw and sludge from wastewater treatment has been tested and improved, and has shown good results. This has demonstrated the potential for recycling rice straw resulting from harvesting, as compared to the practice of burning it. The project resulted in environmental improvements relating to the rice crop.