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Special issue: Sustainable availability and utilisation of wastes
S U S TA I N A B L E P R O D U C T I O N A N D C O N S U M P T I O N
9 (2017) 1–2
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Sustainable Production and Consumption journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/spc
Special issue: Sustainable availability and utilisation of wastes
Undoubtedly, sustainable waste management throughout life cycle of goods and services has become a priority for governments and policy makers. Wastes are the rejects to the environment and can cause losses of important energy and material resources. Wastes are the main cause of pollution posing threat to health globally, especially to vulnerable and poor communities, and the natural envrionment. A hierarchy in managing waste, i.e. prevention of waste, reuse, recycling and recovery of energy in the order of preference has been recommended, to alleviate and eliminate waste to landfills throughout life cycles. However, we are far from being resource efficient. Food wastes seem to raise concerns over our behaviours start to grow from very childhood. Throwing unfinished yet consumable food is a common problem in developed nations. 60% of food waste typically generated in developed nations households can be prevented by simply not producing or making them available for consumption at the first place. Food waste is also a prominent route to wastage of economic value and natural capital. According to the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) studies published in 2013–2016, that avoidable food waste in the UK is responsible for £17 billion of economic value, 20 million of greenhouse gas emissions and 5,400 million cubic tonnes of water per year. Thus, not all waste materials generated are sustainable. Also, consumable food wastes are caused by human behaviour. To eliminate other types of wastes, e.g. from construction, mining and quarrying, manufacturing, energy and agricultural sectors, radically different infrastructure and highly integrated and resource efficient technical innovations are needed integrating various sectors. More commitment in making those investments are needed for achieving estimated benefits of elimination of waste in reality. If innovative and holistic strategies, such as biorefinery, can be developed, waste outlets to landfill can be eliminated and resource recovery from waste (RRfW) can be enabled for a circular economy (Sadhukhan et al., 2016b). To achieve highest resource efficiency and sustainability, biorefinery must produce bio-based products, such as food and pharmaceutical ingredients, fine, specialty and platform chemicals, polymers and fibres, biofuel and bioenergy that in chronological order, have the highest sustainability potential encompassing triple bottom line
social-environmental-economic criteria, by the displacement of fossil resources (Sadhukhan et al., 2014). It is increasingly recognised that radically different and highly efficient approaches and technologies are needed, whereby apparently waste flows become multifaceted resource opportunities via the multi-feed, multi-platform and multi-product integrated facilities. This concept germinates the thrust for a circular economy. To achieve a circular economy, an economic concept for sustainable development, production of goods and services must consume and waste zero or least amounts of virgin raw materials, water and energy resources (The United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 21, in Paris, 30 Nov–12 Dec, 2015). 3R, Reduce, Reuse and Recycling, are the three main requirements for sustainable elimination of waste throughout life cycles of products and services, for a circular economy. Sustainability of whole system life cycle thus has to be analysed by techno-economic evaluation and life cycle assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA), i.e. Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) (Sadhukhan et al., 2014). The original aim of the call for this special issue was to appreciate and enable critical analyses of consequential effects of waste valorisation by displacing existing uses and hence, indirect impacts on the environment and society. For example bulk conversion of lignocellulosic wastes into energy production is not necessarily the best use of these streams. Agricultural and forestry residues are important for returning carbon and nutrients to the soil. As shown in various empirical and modelling studies, residue conversion into energy may negatively impact carbon sequestration in soil. Likewise, conversion of wastes into added value products has indirect effects due to displacement, which need to be analysed. These are the consequential impacts of waste valorisation on the environment and are not easily understood. Recognising how a new process can impact its upstream and downstream supply chains is an important aspect of sustainable development. ‘Fossil derived fuels, petrochemicals and products have decided the life style and comfort of our civilization. Although the life of fossil resources may be extended by the discovery of shale oil and gas reserves, they will be always finite and will continue to get depleted due to the increasing consumption by a growing world population’ (Sadhukhan et al., 2014). Even if fossil resources remain available, these cannot be used, because of the real threat of
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2017.01.002 2352-5509/ c 2017 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. ⃝
2
S U S TA I N A B L E P R O D U C T I O N A N D C O N S U M P T I O N
climate change impacts due to their consumptions. Wastes can be a valuable resource of all products derived from fossil resources, metals, minerals, biofuel, chemical, material, energy and water. An approach/opportunity to deal with these challenges is using lesser amount of virgin resources, and reusing apparently rejects as resources. Recovering energy, and material resources from waste is an attractive but challenging prospect. To partially fulfil these challenges, this special issue comprises six publications on energy, biofuel, fermentation, food, textile and biopolymer applications. The paper entitled “Biomass production for bioenergy using marginal lands” reviews how energy crops grown on marginal lands can help reclaim those lands, management practices of the energy crop production on marginal lands and their economic and environmental benefits. Future work may aim at commercially viable scale of production and providing environmental justification. The paper on “Life cycle energy demand from algal biofuel generated from nutrients present in the dairy waste” assesses biofuel production potentials from dairy waste in four integrated schematics, (i) algal-biodiesel-production, (ii) anaerobic digestion (AD), (iii) pyrolysis and (iv) enzymatic hydrolysis, and energetic efficiencies of producing the biofuel. Life cycle energy demand of the produced biofuel has been determined to be 0.35–0.68 times the energy produced. An exergeticbased framework has been presented for a batch bioreactor for ethanol production in the paper, “Effect of phosphate concentration on exergetic-based sustainability parameters of glucose fermentation by Ethanolic Mucor indicus”. This study shows optimum concentration of phosphorous compound to produce ethanol and biomass. Future work may entail applying the framework for analysing sustainability of various biofuel production processes. In the paper “The Profile of Bioactive Substances in Ten Vegetable and Fruit Byproducts from a Food Supply Chain in Colombia”, the total carotenes, polyphenols and antioxidant flowrates have been analysed in the production processes of bell pepper, carrot, tomato, cabbage and lettuce with a view to make saleable bioactive compounds for animal feed or human consumption. This offers an effective way to add value by co-production in food supply chains. The work “Increasing textile circulation— consequences and requirements” shows that reuse and recycling give enhanced sustainability over energy recovery by incineration of rejected textiles. However, the dimension of human behaviour is yet to be investigated in a greater depth to critically analyse virgin resource saving by textile reuse.
9 (2017) 1–2
Biodegradable polymers such as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) have been investigated in the paper “Producing PHAs in the Bioeconomy—Towards Sustainable Biopolymers” to indicate greenhouse gas emission reduction, waste reduction as well as green jobs creation and innovation potential in the biotechnology sector. It is envisaged that PHA production will be increasingly important in the development of bioeconomy. This special issue has thus made an attempt to address sustainable development challenges. More integrated systems and approaches such as biorefinery (Sadhukhan et al., 2014) and value chain creation (Sadhukhan et al., 2016a) must be developed to address the challenges of increasing waste generation with growing population and close the gap between richer and poorer. Analysis must focus on societal and techno-economic aspects and outreach beyond the indication of green job creation to actually giving measures of income to poor and vulnerable communities and reduction in waste generation by richer communities. This is essential from ethical and truly sustainable development perspectives. It is envisaged that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDG 3: “good health and wellbeing” and SDG 12: “sustainable consumption and production” will be increasingly important for research and innovation in the area of waste elimination and circular economy.
References Sadhukhan, J., Martinez-Hernandez, E., Ng, K.S., 2016a. Biorefinery Value Chain Creation. Chem. Eng. Res. Des. 107, 1–280. Sadhukhan, J., Ng, K.S., Martinez-Hernandez, E., 2014. Biorefineries and Chemical Processes: Design, integration and Sustainability Analysis. Wiley. Sadhukhan, J., Ng, K.S., Martinez-Hernandez, E., 2016b. Novel integrated mechanical biological chemical treatment (MBCT) systems for the production of levulinic acid from fraction of municipal solid waste: A comprehensive techno-economic analysis. Bioresource Technology 215, 131–143.
Jhuma Sadhukhan 1 Centre for Environment and Sustainability, University of Surrey, Guildford, GU2 7XH, United Kingdom E-mail address: [email protected]. 1 This special issue has been jointly edited by Jhuma
Sadhukhan and Kok Siew Ng.
9 (2017) 1–2
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Sustainable Production and Consumption journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/spc
Special issue: Sustainable availability and utilisation of wastes
Undoubtedly, sustainable waste management throughout life cycle of goods and services has become a priority for governments and policy makers. Wastes are the rejects to the environment and can cause losses of important energy and material resources. Wastes are the main cause of pollution posing threat to health globally, especially to vulnerable and poor communities, and the natural envrionment. A hierarchy in managing waste, i.e. prevention of waste, reuse, recycling and recovery of energy in the order of preference has been recommended, to alleviate and eliminate waste to landfills throughout life cycles. However, we are far from being resource efficient. Food wastes seem to raise concerns over our behaviours start to grow from very childhood. Throwing unfinished yet consumable food is a common problem in developed nations. 60% of food waste typically generated in developed nations households can be prevented by simply not producing or making them available for consumption at the first place. Food waste is also a prominent route to wastage of economic value and natural capital. According to the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) studies published in 2013–2016, that avoidable food waste in the UK is responsible for £17 billion of economic value, 20 million of greenhouse gas emissions and 5,400 million cubic tonnes of water per year. Thus, not all waste materials generated are sustainable. Also, consumable food wastes are caused by human behaviour. To eliminate other types of wastes, e.g. from construction, mining and quarrying, manufacturing, energy and agricultural sectors, radically different infrastructure and highly integrated and resource efficient technical innovations are needed integrating various sectors. More commitment in making those investments are needed for achieving estimated benefits of elimination of waste in reality. If innovative and holistic strategies, such as biorefinery, can be developed, waste outlets to landfill can be eliminated and resource recovery from waste (RRfW) can be enabled for a circular economy (Sadhukhan et al., 2016b). To achieve highest resource efficiency and sustainability, biorefinery must produce bio-based products, such as food and pharmaceutical ingredients, fine, specialty and platform chemicals, polymers and fibres, biofuel and bioenergy that in chronological order, have the highest sustainability potential encompassing triple bottom line
social-environmental-economic criteria, by the displacement of fossil resources (Sadhukhan et al., 2014). It is increasingly recognised that radically different and highly efficient approaches and technologies are needed, whereby apparently waste flows become multifaceted resource opportunities via the multi-feed, multi-platform and multi-product integrated facilities. This concept germinates the thrust for a circular economy. To achieve a circular economy, an economic concept for sustainable development, production of goods and services must consume and waste zero or least amounts of virgin raw materials, water and energy resources (The United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 21, in Paris, 30 Nov–12 Dec, 2015). 3R, Reduce, Reuse and Recycling, are the three main requirements for sustainable elimination of waste throughout life cycles of products and services, for a circular economy. Sustainability of whole system life cycle thus has to be analysed by techno-economic evaluation and life cycle assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA), i.e. Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) (Sadhukhan et al., 2014). The original aim of the call for this special issue was to appreciate and enable critical analyses of consequential effects of waste valorisation by displacing existing uses and hence, indirect impacts on the environment and society. For example bulk conversion of lignocellulosic wastes into energy production is not necessarily the best use of these streams. Agricultural and forestry residues are important for returning carbon and nutrients to the soil. As shown in various empirical and modelling studies, residue conversion into energy may negatively impact carbon sequestration in soil. Likewise, conversion of wastes into added value products has indirect effects due to displacement, which need to be analysed. These are the consequential impacts of waste valorisation on the environment and are not easily understood. Recognising how a new process can impact its upstream and downstream supply chains is an important aspect of sustainable development. ‘Fossil derived fuels, petrochemicals and products have decided the life style and comfort of our civilization. Although the life of fossil resources may be extended by the discovery of shale oil and gas reserves, they will be always finite and will continue to get depleted due to the increasing consumption by a growing world population’ (Sadhukhan et al., 2014). Even if fossil resources remain available, these cannot be used, because of the real threat of
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2017.01.002 2352-5509/ c 2017 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. ⃝
2
S U S TA I N A B L E P R O D U C T I O N A N D C O N S U M P T I O N
climate change impacts due to their consumptions. Wastes can be a valuable resource of all products derived from fossil resources, metals, minerals, biofuel, chemical, material, energy and water. An approach/opportunity to deal with these challenges is using lesser amount of virgin resources, and reusing apparently rejects as resources. Recovering energy, and material resources from waste is an attractive but challenging prospect. To partially fulfil these challenges, this special issue comprises six publications on energy, biofuel, fermentation, food, textile and biopolymer applications. The paper entitled “Biomass production for bioenergy using marginal lands” reviews how energy crops grown on marginal lands can help reclaim those lands, management practices of the energy crop production on marginal lands and their economic and environmental benefits. Future work may aim at commercially viable scale of production and providing environmental justification. The paper on “Life cycle energy demand from algal biofuel generated from nutrients present in the dairy waste” assesses biofuel production potentials from dairy waste in four integrated schematics, (i) algal-biodiesel-production, (ii) anaerobic digestion (AD), (iii) pyrolysis and (iv) enzymatic hydrolysis, and energetic efficiencies of producing the biofuel. Life cycle energy demand of the produced biofuel has been determined to be 0.35–0.68 times the energy produced. An exergeticbased framework has been presented for a batch bioreactor for ethanol production in the paper, “Effect of phosphate concentration on exergetic-based sustainability parameters of glucose fermentation by Ethanolic Mucor indicus”. This study shows optimum concentration of phosphorous compound to produce ethanol and biomass. Future work may entail applying the framework for analysing sustainability of various biofuel production processes. In the paper “The Profile of Bioactive Substances in Ten Vegetable and Fruit Byproducts from a Food Supply Chain in Colombia”, the total carotenes, polyphenols and antioxidant flowrates have been analysed in the production processes of bell pepper, carrot, tomato, cabbage and lettuce with a view to make saleable bioactive compounds for animal feed or human consumption. This offers an effective way to add value by co-production in food supply chains. The work “Increasing textile circulation— consequences and requirements” shows that reuse and recycling give enhanced sustainability over energy recovery by incineration of rejected textiles. However, the dimension of human behaviour is yet to be investigated in a greater depth to critically analyse virgin resource saving by textile reuse.
9 (2017) 1–2
Biodegradable polymers such as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) have been investigated in the paper “Producing PHAs in the Bioeconomy—Towards Sustainable Biopolymers” to indicate greenhouse gas emission reduction, waste reduction as well as green jobs creation and innovation potential in the biotechnology sector. It is envisaged that PHA production will be increasingly important in the development of bioeconomy. This special issue has thus made an attempt to address sustainable development challenges. More integrated systems and approaches such as biorefinery (Sadhukhan et al., 2014) and value chain creation (Sadhukhan et al., 2016a) must be developed to address the challenges of increasing waste generation with growing population and close the gap between richer and poorer. Analysis must focus on societal and techno-economic aspects and outreach beyond the indication of green job creation to actually giving measures of income to poor and vulnerable communities and reduction in waste generation by richer communities. This is essential from ethical and truly sustainable development perspectives. It is envisaged that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDG 3: “good health and wellbeing” and SDG 12: “sustainable consumption and production” will be increasingly important for research and innovation in the area of waste elimination and circular economy.
References Sadhukhan, J., Martinez-Hernandez, E., Ng, K.S., 2016a. Biorefinery Value Chain Creation. Chem. Eng. Res. Des. 107, 1–280. Sadhukhan, J., Ng, K.S., Martinez-Hernandez, E., 2014. Biorefineries and Chemical Processes: Design, integration and Sustainability Analysis. Wiley. Sadhukhan, J., Ng, K.S., Martinez-Hernandez, E., 2016b. Novel integrated mechanical biological chemical treatment (MBCT) systems for the production of levulinic acid from fraction of municipal solid waste: A comprehensive techno-economic analysis. Bioresource Technology 215, 131–143.
Jhuma Sadhukhan 1 Centre for Environment and Sustainability, University of Surrey, Guildford, GU2 7XH, United Kingdom E-mail address: [email protected]. 1 This special issue has been jointly edited by Jhuma
Sadhukhan and Kok Siew Ng.