Stillage (distillery wastewater) is the main by-product originating in distilleries, and its volume is approximately 10 times that of ethanol produced. It is not surprising that the utilization of the stillage raises serious problems, and that many attempts have been made all over the world to solve them. In Poland most of the ethanol (about 90%) is produced from starch-based feedstocks, i.e. grains and potatoes. Starch feedstocks are widely used for spirit production also in other European countries, as well as outside Europe. The manuscript provides an overview of global fuel ethanol production and information on methods used for starch-based stillage biodegradation and utilization. The methods presented in this paper have been classified into two major groups. One of these includes the mode of utilizing starch stillage, the other one comprises methods, both aerobic and anaerobic, by which the stillage can be biodegraded.Scarcely 5 per cent of world's ethanol production comes from chemical synthesis. More than 95 per cent of the *Corresponding author ethanol produced is obtained from agricultural or agriculture-related feedstocks. Of these, sugar-based feedstocks account for approximately 42%, and non-sugar feedstocks (mainly starch-based ones) for about 58% of the ethanol volume produced (Tolmasquim, 2007). It seems interesting to note that about 67% of the global ethanol volume (in 2006 this was a total of 39 billion litres (REN21, 2008)) is used for fuel production.

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Next to sugar cane, sugar beets are one of the most popular sugar feedstocks intended for the production of ethanol, a popular biofuel [1]. However, manufacturers of sugar beet-based ethanol struggle with a serious problem posed by the generated environmentally harmful wastewater named sugar beet distillery stillage. This is due to its high load of pollutants expressed as chemical oxygen demand (COD), five-day biological oxygen demand (BOD 5) and total organic carbon (TOC) [2], as well as to the high-volume ratio (12:1 L) of stillage to ethanol [3]. Currently, the annual production of ethanol generates nearly 12•10 9 L of sugar beet distillery stillage [4]. Considering the recent implementation of global programs which assume an

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