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The aim of the present paper was to study the feasibility of using olive oil mill effluents (OMEs) as a substrate in biodegradable polymer production. OMEs were anaerobically fermented to obtain volatile fatty acids (VFAs), which are the most highly used substrate for polyhydroxyalkanotes (PHAs) production. The anaerobic fermentation step was studied both without pretreatment and with different pretreatments (i.e., centrifugation, bentonite addition, and bentonite addition followed by centrifugation) and at various concentrations (28.5, 36.7 and 70.4gCODL⁻¹). During fermentation, VFA concentration was determined (7–16gCODL⁻¹) as well as the corresponding yield with respect to initial COD (22–44%). At all initial concentrations, centrifugation pretreatment (with or without previous addition of bentonite) significantly increased the final VFA concentration and yield, whereas the addition of bentonite alone had no …