Abstract
Economies have begun to shift from linear to circular, adopting, among others, waste-to-energy approaches. Waste management is known to be a paramount challenge, and food waste (FW) in particular, has gained the interest of several actors due to its potential impacts and energy recovery opportunities. However, the selection of alternative valorization scenarios can pose several queries in certain contexts. This paper evaluates four FW valorization scenarios based on anaerobic digestion and composting, in comparison to landfilling, by applying a consistent decision-making framework through a combination of linear programming, Life Cycle Thinking (LCT), and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The evaluation was built upon a case study of five universities in Costa Rica and portrayed the trade-offs between environmental impacts and cost categories from the scenarios and their side flows. Results indicate that the landfill scenario entails higher Global Warming Potential and Fresh Water Eutrophication impacts than the valorization scenarios; however, other impact categories and costs are affected. Centralized recovery facilities can increase the Global Warming Potential and the Land Use compared to semi-centralized ones. Experts provided insights, regarding the ease of adoption of composting, in contrast to the potential of energy sources substitution and economic savings from anaerobic digestion.
Highlights
The circular economy is regarded as a sustainable economic system that reduces raw material extraction and recirculates resources, while creating benefits to society, industries, and the environment [1]
The fiveofcampuses were evaluated assess the possibility of establishing an food waste (FW) valorization plantThe (Table five3).campuses were evaluated to assess the possibility of establishing an FW valorization plant (Table 3)
This paper evaluated four FW-to-energy alternatives and compared them to a landfill scenario through a system expanded Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Environmental Life Cycle Costing (E-LCC)
Summary
The circular economy is regarded as a sustainable economic system that reduces raw material extraction and recirculates resources, while creating benefits to society, industries, and the environment [1]. Together with productive activities and transport, are relevant sources of environmental degradation and impacts, such as global warming, which involves a significant risk for humanity [3]. Ordinary waste entails almost 50% of organic sources approximately, and food waste (FW) is the highest contributor of that organic fraction [4]. It is accountable for 4.4 Gt. CO2 eq per year [5]. The disregard of FW causes economic, social, and environmental constraints [6,7]
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