A review of post-consumption food waste management and its potentials for biofuel production

Abstract

The global world production of food waste is expected to increase by 33% within the next decade. The current annual food waste stands at around 1.6 billion tonnes, which is worth around $ 1.2 trillion loss. Out of this, nearly 50%–60% comes from post-consumption waste (leftover). Besides, food waste is causing serious environmental concerns as it contributes to the total global greenhouse gas emissions. This paper is focused on reviewing the latest trends and challenges in post-consumption food waste management and assessing its potentials for the production of biofuel and biochar. This includes identifying the major characteristics of post-consumption food waste, disposal methods (landfill, animal feed, and donation) and recycling through chemical, biological and thermochemical conversion. The review indicates that recycling through integrated pyrolysis-gasification processes can lead to the production of multiple high-value products (biofuel, biochar/ash and water) with almost zero or negative impact on the environment. The biochar and water have great potentials in soil amendment, thus, extending the benefits of food waste to increasing water resources, livestock and food security, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. Similarly, integrated transesterification and anaerobic digestion may allow overcoming some of the negatives associated with the standalone implementation of these technologies. However, the implementation of modern food waste management technologies is hindered by the lack of standard processing procedures due to the regional diversity of the food waste characteristics. Besides, there are social and technical challenges associated with the lack of proper post-consumption food waste segregation mechanism at the industrial and community levels, as well as the lack of sufficient research on sustainability and life cycle assessment (LCA) of the food waste management options.