1 - Waste minimization, management and co-product recovery in food processing: an introduction

Abstract

The global food and drink industry is one of the largest industry sectors and is essential to all economies. In money-rich but time-poor developed countries, the increased consumption of food has been accompanied by the explosive growth in food processing, with particular emphasis on the development of energy-intensive, ready-to-heat/eat canned, frozen, dried, and fresh meals. As globalization increases across all sectors, such processing is now being carried out throughout the world and many final products are then transported to appropriate markets. However, food processing creates waste. There are a number of economic and technological reasons why food processing waste is produced. Traditional methods of food preparation result in relatively small amounts of locally produced domestic waste, which, in the past, would have been disposed of as feed, by composting or through municipal waste disposal. However, industrial food processing has created large, geographically localized waste streams that have generally increased over time as firms have sought to benefit from economies of scale. Food processing waste is derived from the processing of biological materials and is biodegradable. Food wastes and effluents are rich in biodegradable components with high Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) and Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) content. If they are unmanaged and untreated, their uncontrolled decomposition is hazardous to the environment due to the production of methane and toxic materials. Therefore, this chapter illustrates a simplified diagram of the production of waste materials from the food processing sector and highlights criteria consistent with the waste hierarchy that needs to be addressed in order to minimize disposal requirements. An important piece of legislation, which should be considered in the exploitation of food co-products and wastes, concerns the regulation on novel foods and novel food ingredients.