LCA & LCC of food waste case studies : assessment of food side flow prevention and valorisation routes in selected supply chains

A Quantitative Sustainability Assessment of Food Waste Management in the European Union

“…7,19 Most studies either assess the techno-economic feasibility 18,20−26 or perform life cycle assessments 27−32 of valorization plants for, mainly, pre-consumer food waste. A few studies include cost assessments on top of the environmental one for pre-consumer 22,33,34 and post-consumer 22,34 food waste. However, in order to perform a sustainability assessment, all three pillars (i.e., environment, economy, and society) need to be considered.…”

“…Yet, performing quantitative assessments encompassing both the environmental and the economic sphere has been identified as an important aspect when evaluating the sustainability of a pathway. , Most studies either assess the techno-economic feasibility ,− or perform life cycle assessments − of valorization plants for, mainly, pre-consumer food waste. A few studies include cost assessments on top of the environmental one for pre-consumer ,, and post-consumer , food waste. However, in order to perform a sustainability assessment, all three pillars (i.e., environment, economy, and society) need to be considered .…”

Environmental Assessment of Upgrading Horticultural Side Streams—The Case of Unharvested Broccoli Leaves

“…Use of available biomass to replace food ingredients was also assessed by [39], who found that using food surplus materials with high nutritional value, such as animal blood or brewer spent grains, as a food ingredient or as animal feed gave greater global warming savings than reusing these materials for energy production or dumping them in landfill. In [40], the authors estimated that a 50% reduction in peach and nectarine loss would result in a 4% reduction in global warming potential, while utilising surplus food waste as animal feed could lower the global warming impact by more than 50% in comparison with landfilling. Thus, the environmental impact, especially with respect to global warming, decreases when food waste is utilised according to the higher priority levels of the waste hierarchy [6,18].…”

Climate mitigation efficacy of anaerobic digestion in a decarbonising economy

“…There remains some debate about the environmental superiority of AD over alternative waste management options such as composting and incineration (Evangelisti et al, 2014;Slorach et al, 2019;Di Maria & Micale, 2015). Waste prevention and diversion of prospective biological waste streams to animal feed typically support larger environmental "credits" via avoidance of food and feed production, compared with credits generated by digestion of those same waste streams via avoidance of fossil energy generation and fertiliser application (Albizzati et al, 2021b;De Menna et al, 2019;Leinonen et al, 2018;Tufvesson et al, 2013). Furthermore, previous studies have highlighted significant environmental impacts from methane and ammonia emitted via digester leakage and digestate management (Duan et al, 2020;Rehl & Müller, 2011;van den Oever et al, 2021), and high opportunity costs for land required for food and feed production (Searchinger et al, 2018) were not fully factored in to previous comparisons of biowaste options.…”