The production of food waste covers all the food life cycle: from agriculture, up to industrial manufacturing and processing, retail and household consumption. In developed countries, 42% of food waste is produced by households, while 39% losses occur in the food manufacturing industry, 14% in food service sector and remaining 5% in retail and distribution. Increasingly, industrial ecology concepts such as cradle to cradle and circular economy are considered leading principle for eco-innovation, aiming at "zero waste economy" in which waste are used as raw material for new products and applications. The large amount of waste produced by the food industry, in addition to being a great loss of valuable materials, also raises serious management problems, both from the economic and environmental point of view. Many of these residues, however, have the potential to be reused into other production systems, trough e.g. biorefineries. The present work focuses on the use of food waste coming from food manufacturing (FWm). Through extensive literature review, the authors present feasibility and constraints of applying industrial symbiosis in recovering waste from food processing, focusing on recycling (excluding energy recovery) of the solid and liquid waste from food processing industry. The main uses of functional ingredients derived from this transformation are presented and discussed, highlighting mainstream sectors of application, e.g. in the nutraceutical and pharmaceutical industry.

Food consumption is amongst the main drivers of environmental impacts. On one hand, there is the need\ud to fulfil a fundamental human need for nutrition, and on the other hand this poses critical threats to the\ud environment. In order to assess the environmental impact of food consumption, a lifecycle assessment\ud (LCA)-based approach has been applied to a basket of products, selected as being representative of EU\ud consumption. A basket of food products was identified as representative of the average food and\ud beverage consumption in Europe, reflecting the relative importance of the products in terms of mass and\ud economic value. The products in the basket are: pork, beef, poultry, milk, cheese, butter, bread, sugar,\ud sunflower oil, olive oil, potatoes, oranges, apples, mineral water, roasted coffee, beer and pre-prepared\ud meals. For each product in the basket, a highly disaggregated inventory model was developed based\ud on a modular approach, and built using statistical data. The environmental impact of the average food\ud consumption of European citizens was assessed using the International Reference Life Cycle Data System\ud (ILCD) methodology. The overall results indicate that, for most of the impact categories, the consumed\ud foods with the highest environmental burden are meat products (beef, pork and poultry) and dairy\ud products (cheese, milk and butter). The agricultural phase is the lifecycle stage that has the highest\ud impact of all the foods in the basket, due to the contribution of agronomic and zootechnical activities.\ud Food processing and logistics are the next most important phases in terms of environmental impacts, due\ud to their energy intensity and the related emissions to the atmosphere that occur through the production\ud of heat, steam and electricity and during transport. Regarding the end-of-life phase, human excretion and\ud wastewater treatments pose environmental burdens related to eutrophying substances whose environmental\ud impacts are greater than those of the agriculture, transports and processing phases. Moreover,\ud food losses which occur throughout the whole lifecycle, in terms of agricultural/industrial and domestic\ud food waste, have also to be taken into consideration, since they can amount to up to 60% of the initial\ud weight of the food products. The results of the study go beyond the mere assessment of the potential\ud impacts associated with food consumption, as the overall approach may serve as a baseline for testing\ud eco-innovation scenarios for impact reduction as well as for setting targets

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In the context of a circular economy, sustainable consumption is often seen as the antithesis of current consumption patterns, which have led to the definition of the so-called throwaway society. Reuse may provide a preferred alternative to other waste management options, because it promotes resource efficiency and may significantly reduce environmental impacts. To appraise the environmental benefits related to reuse of goods, a methodology adopting life cycle assessment (LCA) has been developed. A standardized procedure has been developed, identifying reference products within product category subject to reuse, and collecting reliable inventory data as a basis for calculating environmental impact through LCA. A case study on a second-hand shop is presented, and the avoided impacts are quantified. Inventory data were taken both from the literature and directly from sales and surveys submitted to customers. The results are presented, highlighting: 1) for each product category, the average avoided impacts for 1 unit of reused product considered; and 2) for the overall activities of the second-hand shop, the cumulative avoided impacts in 1 yr. In the case study, the higher contribution to avoided impacts comes from the apparel sector, due to the high amount of items sold, followed by the furniture sector, because of the high amount of environmental impacts avoided by the reuse of each single item.