Household food waste to wastewater or to solid waste? That is the question

Abstract

Decision makers need sound analyses of economic and environmental impacts of options for managing household food waste. Food waste impacts public health (it rots, smells, and attracts rodents) and costs (it drives collection frequency). A life cycle inventory is used to quantify total materials, energy, costs and environmental flows for three municipal solid waste systems (collection followed by compost, waste-to-energy or landfill) and two wastewater systems (kitchen food waste disposer followed by rural on-site or municipal wastewater treatment) for food waste management. Inventory parameters are expressed per 100 kg of food waste (wet weight) to place data on a normalised basis for comparison. System boundaries include acquisition, use and decommissioning. Parameters include inputs (land, materials, water) and output emissions to air, water and land. Parameters are ranked simply from high to low. Ranking highest overall was the rural wastewater system, which has a high amount of food waste and carrier water relative to the total throughput over its design life. Waste-to-energy was second; burning food waste yields little exportable energy and is costly. Next, municipal wastewater tied with landfill. Municipal wastewater is low for land, material, energy and cost, but is highest for food waste by-product (sludge). Landfill ranks low for air emissions and cost. Compost ranks lowest; it has the lowest material and water inputs and generates the least wastewater and waterborne waste.

Current practice, challenges and potential methodological improvements in environmental evaluations of food waste prevention – A discussion paper

“…Several previous LCAs of food waste management systems have found that incineration, anaerobic digestion and composting all can result in net avoidance of GWP (Fruergaard and Astrup, 2011;Kirkeby et al, 2006;Smith et al, 2001;Møller et al, 2009;Boldrin et al, 2009), while other studies have come to the conclusion that the same management practices can result in a net contribution to GWP (Baky and Eriksson, 2003;Diggelman and Ham, 2003;Lee et al, 2007). The reason for this can be found in differing assumptions of for example energy and or nutrient recovery, technology choice (i.e.…”

Impacts and managerial implications for sewer systems due to recent changes to inputs in domestic wastewater – A review

“…FWD water consumption below 5 L/person/day has been reported in a wide range of studies (e.g. (De Koning and Van Der Graaf, 1996;Diggelman and Ham, 2003;Marashlian and El-Fadel, 2005;Nilsson et al, 1990;Rosenwinkel and Wendler, 2001). Nilsson et al (1990) analysed household practices upon installation and determined that the use of FWDs coincided with peak sewer flows i.e.…”

Technical approach for a sustainable tourism development. Case study in the Balearic Islands

“…are to be considered [14]. Some recent papers provide a detailed methodology to consider these issues in advanced LCA studies [15].…”