## 1 Introduction  
Environmental sustainability is a key quest for every society, especially now that human, commercial, industrial, and agricultural activities are on the rise, creating significant quantities of wastes that need to be appropriately managed. On farms, manure management includes handling, storage, and application [1]. The traditional management of animal manure involves the application on agricultural fields. However, the major limitation to the extensive use of manure as a fertilizer is the availability of land to receive it in an area close to the farm; therefore, extra land used for other agricultural purposes might be an option [2]. Clearly, direct land application of animal manure results in an improvement of the soil structure, increase in water retention capacity, soil root penetration, and microbial activities, which eventually affects the ability of the crop to absorb nutrients, causing an increase in growth and yield [3, 4, 5]. Such application is vulnerable to the dissemination of manure into water bodies and soil, causing contamination and pollution as it contains a number of pathogens and great organic matter. In detail, applying animal manure on the soil causes air pollution, the release of greenhouse gases [6], perturbance of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and other nutrient cycles owing to the imbalance of nutrients in manure [7], trace element enrichment of the soil [8], as well as eutrophication of water bodies [6], which causes death of aquatic life due to oxygen depletion added to the pollution of the ground and spring water with microbial contents, causing infections and diseases [4; 9]. On the other hand, sawdust encompasses small discontinuous chips or fine particles of wood, formed as a by-product from a series of timber manufacturing processes, including sawing, routing, drilling, and furniture manufacturing and joinery [10; 11]. These wastes (lignocellulosic biomass) are disposed and managed either by dumping on roadsides, drainages, water bodies, or by incineration or by composting, resulting in the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) and noxious gases, causing global warming and its release into the surroundings, leading to environmental hazards [12]. Furthermore, [PERSON] and colleagues [13] emphasised that extra labour and cost are involved to transfer the sawdust to the site for regular burning, and that sawdust and other wood wastes constitute flammable materials or oftentimes assist in the spread of fire outbreaks at the mills. Moreover, sawdust has been reported to be responsible for creating a surface for adsorption of pathogenic microbes, and the blocking of sunlight into water bodies, thereby disrupting the oxygen flow in water [13]. Despite the adverse effects of sawdust, several authors have highlighted that to evade the aforementioned environmental effects, sawdust can become a valuable resource utilised in manufacturing, energy, and agricultural processes, generating products including briquetite, fertiliser, particle board, animal bedding, mulching, and household energy (producer gas and oil [12; 14]), consequently mitigating sawdust environmental pollution, conserving energy, as well as reducing disposal costs [11]. It is worth mentioning that South Africa is a water-scarce country, and on a global scale, it is projected to be amongst the vast majority contributing to the total increase in meat consumption, owing to rising urbanisation, increasing income, and rapid population growth [15]. This may suggest increases in the abundance of the animal wastes that will need proper treatment or management to prevent pollution of the environment and the water bodies in the country as well as to shirk the above-mentioned adverse effects. In order to obtain improved manure management, treatment and resource recovery can be designed to boost food security, even as protecting water bodies and providing revenue streams for small-scale farmers in order to lessen poverty.