Prospective environmental mitigation potential of deploying waste-to-nutrition pathways

Abstract

Abstract Transforming residual biomass into food and feed ingredients is increasingly promoted to mitigate the environmental impacts of food systems, but it remains unclear which, how and under which conditions implementing these strategies would effectively yield net impacts reduction. Here, the environmental performances of several waste-to-nutrition pathways and conventional waste management practices were assessed considering variability in process efficiencies, input composition and deployment contexts. The results show that stringent conditions such as the substitution of meat commodities, unconstrained availability of environmentally-efficient energy supplies, and substantial technological improvements are all required to secure the environmental benefits of waste-to-nutrition pathways compared to other waste valorization strategies. Yet, processing woody residues, manure and sludge into edible microbial biomass could become the best strategy to adopt if the environmental impacts of food systems keep exacerbating.