Abstract
Greenhouse fruit and vegetable production uses large amounts of energy and other resources, and finding ways of reducing its impact may increase sustainability. Outputs generated from solid-state anaerobic digestion (SS-AD) are suitable for use in greenhouses, which creates a need to investigate the consequences of the possible interactions between them. Connecting the fruit and vegetable production with the resource flows from an SS-AD process, e.g., biogas and digestate, could increase circularity while decreasing the total environmental impact. There are currently no studies where a comprehensive assessment of the material flows between greenhouses and SS-AD are analyzed in combination with evaluation of the environmental impact. In this study, material flow analysis is used to evaluate the effects of adding tomato related waste to the SS-AD, while also using life cycle assessment to study the environmental impact of the system, including production of tomatoes in a greenhouse and the interactions with the SS-AD. The results show that the environmental impact decreases for all evaluated impact categories as compared to a reference greenhouse that used inputs and outputs usually applied in a Swedish context. Using the tomato related waste as a feedstock for SS-AD caused a decrease of biomethane and an increase of carbon dioxide and digestate per ton of treated waste, compared to the digestion of mainly food waste. In conclusion, interactions between a greenhouse and an SS-AD plant can lead to better environmental performance by replacing some of the fertilizer and energy required by the greenhouse.
Highlights
Research has shown that the anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) have to decrease by 45% by 2030, as well as reaching net zero around 2050, to have the possibility of containing the global warming below 1.5◦C (IPCC, 2018)
The results show that tomato-related waste (TRW) of these amounts have a small impact on the solid-state anaerobic digestion (SS-anaerobic digestion (AD)) plant
While the SS-AD plant produces more than the amount needed to support the greenhouse with biomethane and CO2, the TRW itself only provides a small share of the resources
Summary
Research has shown that the anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) have to decrease by 45% by 2030, as well as reaching net zero around 2050, to have the possibility of containing the global warming below 1.5◦C (IPCC, 2018). The use of greenhouses is common to produce high amounts of product in a limited space, as well as to produce plants that would not grow well in the surrounding environment. Greenhouses can be resource-intensive with high inputs of fuels, nutrients and growing media, especially if they are heated and/or use supplemental lighting. Fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas have traditionally been used to provide energy to greenhouses (Arizpe et al, 2011). Possible negative impacts on the environment include emissions to air and water, land use, and waste from the operation. The resourceintensive activities of this sector have increased the search for alternative ways in renewable input resources (Menardo et al, 2013)
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