A paper by a research group shows that low-cost waste can be turned into high value products such as bioplastic, electronic devices, equipment for power generation, storage and transmission, and other high added-value products. The archive of researchers.
Between 118 and 138 million tons of organic waste are generated each year, with 100 million tons of that coming from the food production and distribution chain. Only 25% of the waste is recycled. The other 75% is thrown away as a huge loss of resources and damage to the environment.
The European Environment Agency published a report on these numbers. Its statistics are the most recent available and are probably underestimated because they are based on 2011.
One of the drivers of a circular economy is turning waste into resources. A circular bioeconomy is when the waste comes from a renewable source. The topic is explored in an article.
Over the past decade, we have seen waste and residues as raw materials. A critical review of the literature was conducted and the state of the art in strategies to convert waste into bioplastics and advanced materials was changed. We looked for arguments that wouldn't do this. Caio Gomide Otoni said it was a win-win. Otoni is a professor in the Department of Materials Engineering at the Federal University of So Carlos in Brazil and creator of a group called maTREErials.
The study shows that the low-cost raw material for bioplastics and advanced materials can be found in the waste that is habitually thrown away.
The applications range from packaging with anti-viral, anti-microbial and anti-oxidant properties to flexible electronic equipment, to power generation, storage and transmission gear, sensors, thermal and acoustic insulation, and cosmetics.
The food-materials-energy nexus is relevant to the circular bioeconomy. Daniel Souza Corra, the author of the article, said that they set out to present the most advanced strategies for deconstructing agri-food waste. A researcher at the National Laboratory of Nanotechnology for Agribusiness, an arm of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation in So Carlos, and a professor of chemistry and biotechnology at the University of Fsscar.
The European Green Deal is an example of how food losses and waste can be converted into green materials. The official European Commission website states that the circular bioeconomy maximizes the use of side and residual streams from agriculture, food processing and forest-based industries.
The article by Otoni et al. argues that throwing away is not a boundary. The rational alternative to covering the planet with trash is to convert waste into useful resources.
The composition of the food losses and waste poses technological and economic challenges. "We have to address what can be called the'recalcitrance of biomass to deconstruction'." The seasonality of production is an adverse factor. There are certain times of the year when certain types of waste are plentiful. Their composition is usually variable even when they're available. Political nature is the main obstacle to large-scale upcycling. The hope is that innovative firms can overcome these obstacles and move the process forward.
The article shows that there are technological routes to do it. The authors have already mastered them on a laboratory scale or on a semi-pilot scale. Henriette Monteiro Cordeiro de Azeredo is a co-author and researcher at LNNA-EMBRA PA.
The potential for conversion of food waste to bioplastic is shown in the images at the top of this page.
The researchers have also produced anti-microbial foam from sugarcane bagasse, packaging containing chitin from crustacean and insect exoskeletons, and emulsion-stabilizing particles with potential applications in the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and paints.
Brazil is the world's largest producer of sugar cane and oranges, and a leading producer of many other food crops. A third of the total amount produced is lost from one end of the chain to the other, which is a highly significant source of food losses and waste.
A large amount of food losses and waste contains high levels of vitamins, minerals, fiber andProtein, all of which could be converted back into food. Most of it is unsuitable and rejected on the basis of sensory standards. The alternative is to convert waste into useful materials and use them in high added-value devices. Food producers want to maximize the amount of food waste they produce.
One of the leaders of this research line at LNNA-EMBRA PA is Luiz Henrique Mattoso. Dozens of researchers contribute to the research in a network. The other co-authors of the article are Bruno Mattos, a researcher at Aalto University in Finland; Marco Beaumont, a researcher at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) in Vienna, Austria; and the Director of the Bioproducts Institute at the University of British.
The quality of building blocks obtained from waste is the same as that of purer, less processed sources. There are other residual molecules in the waste that can be explored for the introduction of function into bioplastics.
Caio G. Otoni and his team wrote The Food–Materials Nexus: Next Generation Bioplastics and Advanced Materials from AgriFood Residues, Advanced Materials. There is a book titled "10.1002/adma.202102520."
Journal information about advanced materials.
The study shows how waste can be converted into materials for advanced industries.
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