Abstract
Planet Earth is under severe stress from several inter-linked factors mainly associated with rising global population, linear resource consumption, security of resources, unsurmountable waste generation, and social inequality, which unabated will lead to an unsustainable 21st Century. The traditional way products are designed promotes a linear economy that discards recoverable resources and creates negative environmental and social impacts. Here, we suggest multi-disciplinary approaches encompassing chemistry, process engineering and sustainability science, and sustainable solutions in “game changer” challenges in three intersecting arenas of food: Sustainable diet, valorisation of unavoidable food supply chain wastes, and circularity of food value chain systems aligning with the United Nations’ seventeen Sustainable Development Goals. In the arena of sustainable diet, comprehensive life cycle assessment using the global life cycle inventory datasets and recommended daily servings is conducted to rank food choices, covering all food groups from fresh fruits/vegetables, lentils/pulses and grains to livestock, with regard to health and the environment, to emphasise the essence of plant-based diet, especially plant-based sources of protein, for holistic systemic sustainability and stability of the earth system. In the arena of unavoidable food supply chain wastes, economically feasible and synergistically (energy and material) integrated innovative biorefinery systems are suggested to transform unavoidable food waste into functional and platform chemical productions alongside energy vectors: Fuel or combined heat and power generation. In the arena of circularity of food value chain systems, novel materials and methods for plant-based protein functionalisation for food/nutraceutical applications are investigated using regenerative bio-surfactants from unavoidable food waste. This circular economy or industrial symbiosis example thus combines the other two arenas, i.e., plant-based protein sourcing and unavoidable food waste valorisation. The multi-disciplinary analysis here will eventually impact on policies for dietary change, but also contribute knowledge needed by industry and policy makers and raise awareness amongst the population at large for making a better approach to the circular economy of food.
Highlights
Global megatrends such as increasing population, urbanisation and industrialisation in developing countries, and lack of political will to reduce consumption in developed countries will significantly impact resource security
Circular economy models can be built upon “trust, confidentiality, openness, equality and cooperation”, “connecting flows of energy, water and materials, at the same time promoting the symbiotic mindset to others, on all geographical scales, from local to global” to eliminate wastes from value chains, as well as for reliance towards climate change impact and finite resources [9]
In the present context of unsurmountable municipal solid waste generation, material recovery facilities that include automated physical or mechanical sorting to segregate waste to direct into various sectors and chemical transformation to turn waste into added-value resources offer a sustainable circular economy prospect leaving behind no waste [10,11]
Summary
Global megatrends such as increasing population, urbanisation and industrialisation in developing countries, and lack of political will to reduce consumption in developed countries will significantly impact resource security. In the present context of unsurmountable municipal solid waste generation, material recovery facilities that include automated physical or mechanical sorting to segregate waste to direct into various sectors and chemical transformation to turn waste into added-value resources offer a sustainable circular economy prospect leaving behind no waste [10,11] This way a closed loop economy can adhere to the valorisation hierarchy, in the order of decreasing priority, prevent, reduce, reuse, recycle, and energy recovery. We advance the present state of knowledge [19,20,21,22] in three intersecting arenas of food in a synergistic manner by analysing environmental footprints of food choices using the holistic whole system life cycle assessment, illustrating protein isolation pathways from plant-based sources and design-conceptualising sustainable biorefinery systems to valorise unavoidable food waste for a circular economy
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