Life-cycle assessment of food waste recycling

Proper food waste management measures are crucial to environmentally-friendly and sustainable development. To opt for the most environmentally beneficial food waste management strategies, a comprehensive decision-guiding tool is important to evaluate and compare the performance of the handling techniques. Previous studies have demonstrated LCA as a suitable tool to guide decisions on selecting environmentally favorable food waste handling techniques that fits the actual situations of the countries or regions. LCA studies on food waste management have been reviewed and summarized in this chapter. LCAs on conventional food waste treatment technologies and more recently developed techniques, such as bioconversion and valorization to valued-added chemicals, are presented. To provide more comprehensive information on the procedures of conducting LCA on food waste management options, the details of two of the published studies, which serve as the examples of conventional macro-scale management strategies and laboratory-scale valorization techniques, are then summarized and presented.