Trends in Food Waste Management

Trends in Food Waste Management
by Salman Zafar
http://bioenergyconsult.wordpress.com/tag/food-waste/

Food waste is an untapped energy source that mostly ends up rotting in landfills, thereby releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Food waste is difficult to treat or recycle since it contains high levels of sodium salt and moisture, and is mixed with other waste during collection. Major generators of food wastes include hotels, restaurants, supermarkets, residential blocks, cafeterias, airline caterers, food processing industries, etc.

In United States, food waste is the third largest waste stream after paper and yard waste. Around 12.7 percent of the total municipal solid waste (MSW) generated in the year 2008 was food scraps that amounted to about 32 million tons. According to EPA, about 31 million tons of food waste was thrown away into landfills or incinerators in 2008. As far as United Kingdom is concerned, households throw away 8.3 million tons of food each year. These statistics are an indication of tremendous amount of food waste generated all over the world.

The proportion of food waste in municipal waste stream is gradually increasing and hence a proper food waste management strategy needs to be devised to ensure its eco-friendly and sustainable disposal. Food waste can be recycled via:

•In-vessel composting (IVC): A treatment that breaks down biodegradable waste by naturally occurring micro-organisms with oxygen, in an enclosed vessel or tunnel;
•Anaerobic digestion (AD): A treatment that breaks down biodegradable waste in the absence of oxygen, producing a renewable energy (biogas) that can be used to generate electricity and heat.
Currently, only about 3 percent of food waste is recycled throughout U.S., mainly through composting. Composting provides an alternative to landfill disposal of food waste, however it requires large areas of land, produces volatile organic compounds and consumes energy. Consequently, there is an urgent need to explore better recycling alternatives. Anaerobic digestion has been successfully used in several European and Asian countries to stabilize food wastes, and to provide beneficial end-products. Sweden, Austria, Denmark, Germany and England have led the way in developing new advanced biogas technologies and setting up new projects for conversion of food waste into energy.

Of the different types of organic wastes available, food waste holds the highest potential in terms of economic exploitation as it contains high amount of carbon and can be efficiently converted into biogas and organic fertilizer. Food waste can either be used as a single substrate in a biogas plant, or can be co-digested with organic wastes like cow manure, poultry litter, sewage, crop residues, abattoir wastes, etc.
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Food Waste-to-Energy
by Salman Zafar

The waste management hierarchy suggests that reduce, reuse and recycling should always be given preference in a typical waste management system. However, these options cannot be applied uniformly for all kinds of wastes. For examples, organic waste is quite difficult to deal with using the conventional 3R strategy. Of the different types of organic wastes available, food waste holds the highest potential in terms of economic exploitation as it contains high amount of carbon and can be efficiently converted into biogas and organic fertilizer.

There are numerous places which are the sources of large amounts of food waste and hence a proper food-waste management strategy needs to be devised for them to make sure that either they are disposed off in a safe manner or utilized efficiently. These places include hotels, restaurants, malls, residential societies, college/school/office canteens, religious mass cooking places, airline caterers, food and meat processing industries and vegetable markets which generate organic waste of considerable quantum on a daily basis.

The anaerobic digestion technology is highly apt in dealing with the chronic problem of organic waste management in urban societies. Although the technology is commercially viable in the longer run, the high initial capital cost is a major hurdle towards its proliferation. The onus is on the governments to create awareness and promote such technologies in a sustainable manner. At the same time, entrepreneurs, non-governmental organizations and environmental agencies should also take inspiration from successful food waste-to-energy projects in other countries and try to set up such facilities in Indian cities and towns.

How Long It Takes to Decompose Your Waste

How Long It Takes to Decompose Your Waste

A Painless Way to Save Energy: Save Food

A Painless Way to Save Energy: Save Food

According to a new study of food waste in the U.S., it takes the equivalent of 1.4 billion barrels of oil to produce get a year’s worth of food to the market, but about 350 million barrels of that goes down the drain in the form of wasted food. The study, reported by The American Chemical Society, is noteworthy not only for what it includes about food-related energy, but also for what it leaves out.

Save Food, Save Energy
Food production consumes a big chunk of energy in the U.S., ranging from 8 percent to almost 16 percent according to some estimates, so achieving even a modest percentage of energy conservation in this sector could yield significant results. Actually, there is a lot of room for improvement, because the U.S. Department of Agriculture has estimated that about 27% of food is wasted in the U.S. The authors of the study picked apart the data to calculate the figure of 350 million barrels, which translates into about 2 percent of U.S. energy consumption. That might not sound like much but it’s on par with, or better than, other important energy conservation measures.

Food and Energy
The researchers based their calculations on energy consumption in agriculture, transportation, processing, food sales, storage, and preparation. Interestingly, by relying on the Department of Agriculture’s figure of 27% waste, the analysis errs on the side of caution. That figure basically includes only food that makes it to the market. It leaves out food that is wasted while still on farms, fisheries, and processing plants. In addition, although the estimate is fairly recent some of the data is at least 30 years old, and based on rising production and consumption the researchers note that they expect the embedded energy in food to have increased since then.

Save Food, Save Energy
Cutting down on food waste is just one way to conserve food-related energy. Reclaiming energy from food waste is another way. For example San Francisco is converting food waste into biogas by sending it to a biogas facility at a sewage treatment plant, instead of sending it to a landfill. Researchers are also looking at ways to convert recovered waste grease from sewage treatment plants into biofuel, and then of course there’s always the potential for converting more food waste into compost.

Agriculture and Food Waste
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, water use has actually declined slightly in the past 25 years, even though the population has increased by 30%, mainly thanks to water recycling in power plants and agricultural water conservation. That could serve as an indicator of the potential for a significant reduction in farm food waste, either as compost or biogas. It’s already starting to happen: farmers are beginning to install biogas equipment (and take in food waste from nearby communities, too), and researchers are beginning to look at orange peels and other food waste as a biofuel feedstock.

The name of the study, by the way, is “Wasted Food, Wasted Energy: Embedded Energy in Food Waste in the United States.”

A Painless Way to Save Energy: Save Food