Reduce, relegalize, and recycle food waste

Ermgassen, Erasmus zu; Balmford, Andrew; Salemdeeb, Ramy

doi:10.1126/science.aaf9630

Cited by 27 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…With a rapidly increasing population, environmental pollution, and energy and water scarcity, the world is currently going through a rather challenging period. , In particular, the unreasonable handling of abundant food waste may cause adverse environmental and social effects, such as the decline of available land, adverse global climate change, and economic consumption. As such, the means of effectively converting otherwise wasted resources into valuable and functional materials toward sustainable applications in a mild, low-energy-consumption, and eco-friendly way has become an issue of significant importance. − There are also alternative opportunities to alleviate the social and environmental issues. Solar energy, as a renewable and sustainable resource, has been extensively exploited to realize diverse solar-to-thermal conversion applications, − including photothermic interfacial water evaporation, − thermoelectric converters, − thermal management devices, − mechanical actuators, , and solar heated oil absorbers. , In recent years, extensive efforts have been dedicated to develop a variety of chemically synthesized solar absorbers, such as noble metal particles, − carbon nanostructures, − functionalized hydrogels, − and sponges. − …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Converting Pomelo Peel into Eco-friendly and Low-Consumption Photothermic Biomass Sponge toward Multifunctioal Solar-to-Heat Conversion

Zhang

Xiao

Feng

et al. 2020

ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng.

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Converting waste into versatile materials has been considered as an effective strategy to tackle environmental issues such as shortages in food, clean water, and energy. Conventional carbonization technology has provided an effective approach for constructing photothermal materials for interfacial evaporation or crude oil removal. However, high energy consumption, poor shape retention, and weak mechanical strength have significantly hindered the practical application of conventional carbonization technology. This work discusses how a biomass-derived sponge from discarded pomelo peel (PP) may be used to collect photothermal polypyrrole in a cost-effective way with mild reaction. The photothermic sponge which is derived from this process, can then be effectively employed to realize solar enhanced water evaporation and heavy crude oil removal. The polypyrrole-functionalized pomelo peel (FPyPP) can be attained by a mild, one-pot wet oxypolymerization method, resulting in over 95% absorption of sunlight and evaporation rates of about 1.22 kg/m2 under the sun. Furthermore, the concentrated heat on the sponge surface can efficiently reduce the viscosity of heavy crude oil and thereby lead to an effective cleanup. This study aims to provide a low-cost, low-energy-consumption, and eco-friendly approach to the acquisition of the multifunctional photothermic sponge by recycling the waste and demonstrating potential applications in tackling clean water generation and polluted water treatment.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Converting Pomelo Peel into Eco-friendly and Low-Consumption Photothermic Biomass Sponge toward Multifunctioal Solar-to-Heat Conversion

Zhang

Xiao

Feng

et al. 2020

ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng.

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“…Although fostering the use of (former) foodstuffs and by-products for feed production is part of the recommendation released by the EU Fusion project, to date these practices are hardly implemented in the European Union due to the current legal framework on food waste management and livestock feeding. Several authors have highlighted this lack of practice and proposed to introduce policy changes, together with consumer and industry support, in order to re-introduce the possibility of using food waste as livestock feed in the European Union [18][19][20][21][22].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pet Food as the Most Concrete Strategy for Using Food Waste as Feedstuff within the European Context: A Feasibility Study

et al. 2018

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Food loss and waste have a negative environmental impact due to the water, land, energy and other natural resources used to produce the wasted food, along with post-consumption disposal costs. Reducing food waste will thus help improve sustainability and decrease the environmental impact of the food system. Using food waste for animal feed is of growing importance in terms of the policies targeted at tackling food waste but the current legal framework in the European Union (EU) strongly restricts the possibility of using food waste for this purpose. The aim of this work is to evaluate the feasibility of innovative measures for feed production in the EU and to identify the best strategies to implement them. First, a technical evaluation of a case study is presented, which is a process developed in the United States for urban food waste transformation into animal feed. Second, there is an analysis of the potential application of this process in the European Union within the current legal framework. The results reveal that the feed product derived from food waste is compliant with EU safety requirements and is nutritionally valuable. This work also suggests that the implementation of this kind of process in the European Union has great potential, provided that food surplus is recovered and treated before it turns into waste and that the different types of food surplus identified are used as feed for the right animal type in accordance with European legislation (i.e., livestock, aquarium fish, pets). On these terms, pet food can be the most concrete strategy for using food waste within the European context. In general, the implementation of feed-from-food measures to reduce food waste in Europe is already possible and does not need to wait for further policy interventions.

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“…They were historically vast in spatial extent in many locations (see examples in zu Ermgassen, Hancock, et al (2016) and case studies in Supporting Information Table S1), and often provided substantial vertical relief (Brooks, 1884;Zhang, Xi, & Ge, 2004), forming unique, biodiverse, and productive habitats (Möbius, 1877). Their complex biogenic nature, however, also results in their being especially sensitive to physical impacts (Cook et al, 2013).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Until now, stakeholders in diverse geographies have been reliant primarily on restoration examples and science from the USA to understand the potential for bivalve habitat restoration and the ecosystem service benefits it may yield (see zu Ermgassen, Hancock, et al (2016) for a comprehensive review). This information is, to a degree, transferable and can therefore benefit and provide a useful guideline for initiatives (Gillies, Crawford, & Hancock, 2017), but benefit transfer across regions and between genera can also result in erroneous estimates of ecosystem services value (Mtwana Nordlund, Koch, Barbier, & Creed, 2016;Plummer, 2009).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The benefits of bivalve reef restoration: A global synthesis of underrepresented species

Ermgassen

Thurstan

Corrales

et al. 2020

Aquatic Conservation

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Bivalve habitat restoration is growing in geographic extent and scale globally. While addressing the wide‐scale loss of these biogenic habitats is still a key motivation behind restoration efforts, stakeholders and funders are increasingly drawn to shellfish restoration for the many ecosystem services these habitats provide. There is clear evidence for the provision of ecosystem services from species targeted for restoration in the USA, in particular Crassostrea virginica. Ecosystem services, however, remain largely unquantified or even undescribed for the majority of other species targeted for restoration. A structured review of the literature was undertaken and supplemented by expert knowledge to identify which ecosystem services are documented in the following other bivalve species targeted for restoration: Ostrea edulis, Ostrea angasi, Crassostrea rhizophorae, Perna canaliculus, Modiolus modiolus, Mytilus edulis, Mytilus platensis, Crassostrea gigas, Ostrea denselamellosa, Crassostrea ariakensis, and Crassostrea sikamea. Key knowledge gaps in quantifying ecosystem services and the ecosystem engineering properties of habitat‐building bivalves contributing to the provision of ecosystem services were identified. Ecosystem services with the potential to be widely applicable across bivalve habitat‐building species were identified. Though there is evidence that many of the ecosystem engineering properties that underpin the provision of ecosystem services are universal, the degree to which services are provided will vary between locations and species. Species‐specific, in situ, studies are needed in order to avoid the inappropriate transfer of the ecosystem service delivery between locations, and to further build support and understanding for these emerging targets of restoration.

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Reduce, relegalize, and recycle food waste

Cited by 27 publications

References 2 publications

Converting Pomelo Peel into Eco-friendly and Low-Consumption Photothermic Biomass Sponge toward Multifunctioal Solar-to-Heat Conversion

Converting Pomelo Peel into Eco-friendly and Low-Consumption Photothermic Biomass Sponge toward Multifunctioal Solar-to-Heat Conversion

Pet Food as the Most Concrete Strategy for Using Food Waste as Feedstuff within the European Context: A Feasibility Study

The benefits of bivalve reef restoration: A global synthesis of underrepresented species

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