Environmental and Economic Assessment of Alternative Food Waste Management Scenarios

Abstract

The scope of this paper was to examine the environmental and economic performance of alternative household fermentable waste (HFW) management scenarios. In Greece, the business-as-usual scheme for the management of HFW is its disposal in landfills as part of mixed waste. Within a HORIZON2020 called Waste4think a series of alternative approaches based on the benefits of source separation was developed. Specifically, source separated HFW is led to a drying/shredding plant, located in the municipality, for the production of a high-quality biomass product, which is called FORBI (Food Residue Biomass). Alternative approaches have been examined for the exploitation of FORBI: a simple alternative consists of the transportation of food waste (without drying/shredding) to the landfill, composting and covering the landfill’s layers with the produced compost. On the other hand, a set of technological alternatives examined are: one- and two-stage anaerobic digestion for the production of biogenic compressed natural gas (bio-CNG) and bio-hythane, composting and utilization of compost in the municipality, bio-ethanol production and pelletization. The alternatives have been assessed using Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing tools. The results show that both the simple and the innovative alternatives proposed perform better than the baseline scenario both in economic and environmental terms.