FOOD WASTE PREVENTION AS A TOOL FOR CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION: A CASE STUDY FROM GREECE

Abstract Since the publication of the findings that consumers in the UK throw away 31% of the food that they buy, food waste is becoming an increasingly significant global issue. Food waste is generated throughout the entire life cycle of food. Since significant resources are required for food production, manufacturing, transportation, storage, retailing and preparation, food waste is a waste of valuable resources with obvious economic and environmental implications. To make matters environmentally worse, food waste typically ends up in landfills and, due to its high biodegradability, contributes to the global greenhouse gases generation. Thus, food waste prevention, among its other positive contributions, can also act as a tool for the mitigation of man-made climate change. The aim of this paper is the estimation of the GHG emissions associated with food waste generation in Greece. The scope of the research included both the emissions upstream of the waste management and those associated with the management of food waste. The results indicate that emissions of 5,609.2 Gg of CO 2 eq. are associated with food waste in Greece. In order to reduce the burden on global warming resulting from food waste, emphasis should be placed on the prevention of food waste generated throughout the life cycle of food stuff. Keywords: greenhouse gases, food waste, prevention 2 Introduction There is evidence that the most environmentally damaging form of human consumption is eatin

WASTE PREVENTION SCENARIOS USING A WEB-BASED TOOL FOR LOCAL AUTHORITIES

Abstract Waste prevention is the highest ranked priority in the European Waste Framework Directive. The aim of this paper is to present the design, development and main features of a web-based tool that enables local authorities to select and implement optimum waste prevention programmes for their local conditions and to prepare their Waste Prevention Plans. The aforementioned tool, namely the WASP-Tool, is implemented as a knowledge-based decision support system which extracts characteristics and features of the waste prevention strategy models and applies multi-criteria evaluation techniques in order to facilitate decision making. It has been developed in Greek and reflects Greek and Cypriot data, context and waste prevention potential, to facilitate its use by local authorities and local administration

Assessing the transition of municipal solid waste management using combined material flow analysis and life cycle assessment

Faced with the challenges to deal with increasingly growing and ever diversified municipal solid waste (MSW), a series of waste directives have been published by European Commission to divert MSW from landfills to more sustainable management options. The presented study assessed the transition of MSW man-agement in Nottingham, UK, since the enforcement of the EU Landfill Directive using a tool of combined materials flow analysis (MFA) and life cycle assess-ment (LCA). The results show that the MSW management system in Nottingham changed from a relatively simple landfill & energy from waste (EfW) mode to a complex, multi-technology mode. Improvements in waste reduction, material re-cycling, energy recovery, and landfill prevention have been made. As a positive result, the global warming potential (GWP) of the MSW management system re-duced from 1,076.0 kg CO2–eq./t of MSW in 2001/02 to 211.3 kg CO2–eq./t of MSW in 2016/17. Based on the results of MFA and LCA, recommendations on separating food waste and textile at source and updating treatment technologies are made for future improvement

Potential uses and applications of treated wine waste: a review

Recently, there has been an upsurge in the exploitation of the waste materials generated by the wine industry. Wine waste is characterised by the presence of natural antioxidants much safer than synthetic antioxidants. Wine waste-derived antioxidants have been recently used in the food industry. Moreover, wine waste can be potentially used as soil conditioner, as adsorbent for heavy metals, for fertiliser and for pullulan production. This review aims at presenting the most important and economically viable applications of treated wine waste