Assessment of the Multidimensional Performances of Food Waste Utilization Technologies in China

Abstract

In recent years, China has made great efforts to carry out source-separation in municipal solid waste management; in particular, the utilization of food waste has received increasing attention. Food waste-utilizing technologies, including anaerobic digestion, aerobic biological treatment, and insect feed conversion, are currently applied in China. However, in the existing cases, there were several disadvantages, such as a low rate of utilization, significant environmental impacts, poor economic benefits, etc., as well as a lack of systematic analysis and comprehensive assessment of the performances of food waste utilization technologies. In this study, a four-dimensional performance assessment method (resource efficiency, environmental impact, economic feasibility, and social effect, with 21 indicators) was established for assessing the life cycle process of food waste utilization technologies. We collected detailed information of 14 typical food waste utilization cases in China, and the results showed that the average scores of anaerobic digestion and insect feed conversion were 58.39 and 59.65, higher than those of the aerobic biological treatment (49.16). The highest scores among all subdivision technologies were centralized black soldier fly conversion and mesophilic wet anaerobic digestion, which were 67.14 and 60.82, respectively. With respect to the technologies of different treatment capacities and distribution modes, i.e., centralized and decentralized technologies, the resource efficiency and economic benefit scores of the former were 13% and 62% higher than those of the latter, whereas the environmental impacts and social effect scores of the latter were 8% and 34% greater than those of the former, respectively. In practice, the utilization technology of food waste should be chosen according to local conditions, such as the physical and chemical properties of food waste, the classification of municipal solid waste, financial affordability, collection and transportation distance, etc.