Soil degradation and desertification were widely and severely existed in Northern China. The amelioration of the sandy soil and restoration of the sandy plants were currently the key tasks for protection of regional ecological environment, and also the important content for promotion of regional ecological civilization construction. Given the large fluidity, low concentrations of organic compounds and deficient water-retaining ability of northern sandy soil and based on review of previous literature, it was suggested that municipal sludge could be recycled and used to ameliorate sandy soil and restore sandy plants since the municipal sludge has the good properties of sufficient resources, high amount of organic compounds and glutinous matters, enrichment of nutrients (i.e., NPK, etc.), facilitating the growth of sandy plants, etc. However, since the municipal sludge is mainly originated from industrial and municipal wastewater treatment plant, it contains certain amounts of heavy metals, organic compounds, pathogenic microorganisms and other hazardous components which may provoke the potential risk to the ecological environment of sandy land if directly applied. Therefore, to ensure the availability of utilizing municipal sludge in ecological restoration of sandy land, several measures were recommended to be taken such as controlling the source of pollutants, applying the biological compost/fermentation and solidification/stabilization pretreatment technologies, formulating corresponding technical guidelines, rigidly managing its application scopes and amounts, and exerting a long-term tracked detection and risk assessment.
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