Current status of food waste generation and management in China

Abstract

The current status of FW generation, including its characteristics, management, and current challenges in China, were analyzed, and further suggestions were made with regards to improvement. About 19.50% of the FW generated could be treated under the current designs for treatment capacity in China. FW characteristics show great * * Corresponding author. Address: (Y. Jin). Recently, the rapid development of the Chinese economy and the growing environmental consciousness of the government and citizens have also led to the rapid development of FW treatment capacity in China. As an important means of environmental protection, the construction of FW treatment plants has attracted considerable attention. China has made major contributions to its FW management capacity. Between 2011 and 2015, 100 pilot projects were established by four ministries † to enhance FW resource recovery. FW treatment typically consists of † Chinese National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and Ministry of Environmental Protection and Ministry of Agriculture 3 anaerobic digestion (AD), composting, and animal feeding, while the treatment capacity of these methods ranges from 20 to 3990 tons per day. There is still a large gap between the amount of FW generated and designed capacity (30,000 tons per day) according to the 12 th Five-year Plan for Economic and Social Development of the Peoples Republic of China (2011 to 2015). Moreover, China has issued specified policies and regulations on FW management (Bi et al., 2016). However, the FW generated in different regions and seasons often varies in terms of total solid (TS), volatile solid (VS), crude protein (CP), Carbohydrate (CA), and ether extract (EE)compositions (Galanakis, 2015). Therefore, the high production and significant variation in the composition of FW creates a large challenge for countries with a vast area, large population and the major differences between regions, urban and rural areas, and ethnic groups.The rapid construction of FW treatment facilities during the 12 th five-year plan has been completed and the 13 th five-year plan (2016 to 2020) has recently been released. This is a good opportunity to summarize and analyze the current state of FW management in China. FW treatment in China consists of a variety of processing technologies, treatment scales, and recycling methods, and this state-of-the-art review will assess to identify a focus for researchers and engineers to support future policies and business innovations. However, little systematic research on the current state of FW management in China is available. Information from previous relevant studies needs to be updated, and some results, such as the amount of FW generated nationally, are inconsistent (40 to 90 million tons per year) (De Clercq et al., 2016;Yang et al., 2012;Zhang et al., 2014). This paper aims to provide a comprehensive review of the current state of FW treatment facilities in mainland China and clearly identify future research directions.The review cov...

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