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harmful to the environment. The FPR utilization and disposal hierarchy can serve as a management strategy for yielding the greatest benefit to the industry, society, and environment. Factors affecting the costs of residual disposal are the hydraulic load and the organic load. The pollution loads at the processing plant can be reduced significantly through water conservation and by process modifications. Many opportunities exist for recovery of FPR for human and animal uses. A variety of processes have been developed for converting FPR into fuels, food ingredients, and other valuable products. A number of waste treatment processes are available to make the wastewater suitable for discharge. Most solid wastes are disposed of by returning them to the land. The key to minimizing the disposal costs is to remove excessive moisture from the waste materials.
EPA. 1977. Pollution abatement in the fruit and vegetable industry. EPA-62513-77-0007. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C. Hang YD. 1988. Recovery of food ingredients from grape pomace. Process Biochem 23(1):2-4. Hang YD, Woodams EE. 2001a. Enzymatic production of reducing sugars from corn cobs. Food Sci Technol 34:140-2. Hang YD, Woodams EE. 2001b. Enzymatic enhancement of citric acid production by Aspergillus niger from corn cobs. Food Sci Technol 34:140-2. Hang YD, Lee C Y, Woodams EE. 1986. Solid state fermentation of grape pomace for ethanol production. Biotechnol Lett 8:53-6. Hang YD, Downing DL, Stamer J R, Splittstoesser D F. 1972. Wastes generated in the manufacture of sauerkraut. J Milk Food Technol 35:432-5. Hudson HT. 1971. Solid waste management in the food processing industry. Proc. 2nd Natl. Symp. Food Processing Wastes. Corvallis, Oreg.: Oregon State Univ. Mattick LR, Rice AC. 1976. Fatty acid composition og grape seed oil from native American and hybrid grape varieties. Am J Enol Viticul 27:88-90. Rose WW and co-workers. 1971. Wastes from cannery and freezing fruits and vegetables. Proc. 2nd Natl. Symp. Food Processing Wastes. Corvallis, Oreg.: Oregon State Univ. Ruengruglikit C, Hang YD. 2003. L(+)- Lactic acid acid production from corn cobs by Rhizopus oryzae NRRL 395. Food Sci Technol (forthcoming). Stamer JR, Dickson MH. 1975. High-solids cabbage for sauerkraut production: Its effect upon brine reduction and yield of product. J Milk Food Technol 38:688-90. Wilberg K, Assenhaimer C, Rubio J. 2002. Removal of aqueous phenol catalysed by a low-purity soybean peroxidase. J Chem Technol 77:851-7.
Edited by Manfred Kroger, Ph.D., Editor of the Proceedings of the 12 th World Congress of Food Science and Technology

References
Anonymous. 2003. Grape seed extract applications expand. In: February 2003 issue of Prepared Foods. Bensenville, IL: Business News Publishing Co. p. 59. Brandt RC, Martin KS. 1994. The food processing residual management manual. Publication Nr 2500-BK-DER-1649. Harrisburg, Pa.: Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Resources.

Food Waste Management by Life Cycle Assessment of the Food Chain

THOMAS OHLSSON ABSTRACT: In the past, environmental activities in the food industry used to be focused on meeting the requirements set by authorities on waste and sewage disposal and, more recently, regarding emissions to air. Today environmental issues are considered an essential part of the corporate image in progressive food industries. To avoid sub-optimization, food waste management should involve assessing the environmental impact of the whole food chain. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an ISO-standardized method to assess the environmental impact of a food product. It evaluates the resources used to perform the different activities through the chain of production from raw material to the user step. It also summarizes the emission/waste to air, water, and land from the same activities throughout the chain. These emissions are then related to the major environmental concerns such as eutrophication, acidification, and ecotoxicity, the factors most relevant for the food sector. The food industry uses the LCAs to identify the steps in the food chain that have the largest impact on the environment in order to target the improvement efforts. It is then used to choose among alternatives in the selection of raw materials, packaging material, and other inputs as well as waste management strategies. A large number of food production chains have been assessed by LCAs over the years. This will be exemplified by a comparison of the environmental impact of ecologically grown raw materials to those conventionally grown. Today LCA is often integrated into process and product development, for example, in a project for reduction of water usage and waste valorization in a diversified dairy.

Life cycle assessment

n considering the management of food waste, it is important to have a food chain prospective in order to understand how food waste is created and how it can be brought back into the food chain again. It is also important to realize that when any waste appears further down in the food production chain, it means that all the
Author Ohlsson is with SIK - The Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology, Gteborg, Sweden (E-mail: To@sik.se).

production steps earlier in the chain must also be producing this waste material. Consequently, the production volumes increase as soon as waste is created downstream. An efficient way of analyzing the environmental impact of food production chains, including food waste, is the method of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This method is today well established (ISO 1997). In LCA the various resources used for the activities throughout the food chain, such as growing of raw materials, industrial transformations, packaging, distribution, and storage, as well as consumption, are considered
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(Figure 1). Resources used might be energy, raw materials, and other input chemicals. In LCA, also the emissions created by the various activities throughout the food chain, such as emissions of carbon dioxide to the air, of biological oxygen demanding waste material to water and of solid waste are calculated. The LCA results can then be used to identify where in the production chain the largest environmental impacts are occurring or where the largest emissions are happening, giving possibilities to reducing the overall environmental impact of the food production system.
Table 1Environmental concerns of the food production chain Eutrophication Energy efficiency Phosphorus Toxicity Waste management too much nitrogen leakage too much leakage limited nonrenewable resource pesticide/herbicide residues cadmium and other heavy metals

Environmental concerns of the food production chain

he food production system is often the goal of environmental actions, such as reduction of chemical pollutants in the environment in order to make the food grown safer. But it has to be realized that the food production chain as such is also contributing to environmental problems. In Table 1 a number of environmental concerns of the present food production system are presented. Many countries are suffering from eutrophication with too high levels of nitrogen leakage from fertilization of agricultural land. The same problem of leakage is occurring for phosphorus which is also a limited nonrenewal natural resource. Another concern is the presence of pesticides and other chemicals in agriculture, and high levels of cadmium and other heavy metals in foods emanating from synthetic fertilizers in particular. Finally, waste management of biological material in waste water and of solid waste is a major concern to many food production systems.

spective over time. It started with a very passive attitude with an end-of-pipe perspective. Companies made sure that the demands of environmental legislation were met. Gradually an increased understanding came about that reducing energy consumption and reducing production waste also means reduction of costs for the production. Many companies today are very active in environmental issues in order to capitalize on environmental or ecological claims as part of marketing of their products. And we gradually also see a growing number of companies embracing aspects of environmental concern as part of their corporate image and realizing the economical value of these issues, for example, for investors.

LCA of food production chains

CA is an effective tool to make improvement analysis of the food chain. LCA is used to answer questions of the environmental impact of ecologically in comparison to traditionally grown produce or questions of which ingredients or packaging materials to select. It can also be used to evaluate the environmental impact of the scale of production and the location of that production to shed light on aspects of scale of economy in the production chain versus environmental impact of distribution distances and the logistic systems. Finally, LCA is often used to analyze alternative waste handling and energy recycling systems (Mattsson and Sonesson 2003). In Figure 2 through 4 the energy used in the food production chains for 3 different food products illustrate how LCA analysis can be used to identify which part of the food production system has the largest impact on the environment. The diagrams illustrate that there are substantial differences in the energy used to produce one kilogram of table potatoes in comparison to the production of hamburger bread and very much so to pork production. It also illustrates that for high-value-added products, such as pork, the largest energy consumption and thus production of emissions and other wastes is in the agriculture sector, whereas for a high-produc-

Environment and the food chain actors

f you look how the industries along the food chain are treating environmental issues, we can see a gradual change in their per-

Figure1Overall scheme of a products life cycle. CRH108

Figure 2Energy use for table potatoes (from LRF 2002).

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Table 2LCA of the closed-loop dairy. Alternative upgrading of diluted milk. Current operation Energy use (kJ/L milk) Eutrophication (O2 equivalents/L milk) 62 0.25 Operation with nanofiltration 47 0.24 Operation with nanofiltration and reverse osmosis 48 0.12

Figure 4Energy use for pork (from LRF 2002). Figure 3Energy use for hamburger bread (from LRF 2002).

tive vegetable, such as potatoes, the major part of energy use is in the consumer end of the food production chain.

LCA in food waste management

CA can also be used as a tool to evaluate alternative processing technologies or systems, as illustrated in Table 2. With the objective to take care of diluted milk in fractions coming from start-up and shut-down of dairy processing lines, the introduction of alternative membrane separation technologies was evaluated. Energy use could be reduced by the introduction of nanofiltration. The LCA also showed that a substantial reduction of the eutrophication from dairy waste water could be accomplished by the introduction of reverse osmosis membrane filtration. As the cost of getting rid of the waste water is increasing, there are clear economical benefits for the introduction of these membrane technologies in this particular dairy (Sonesson 2001). As pointed out above, it is important to realize that food waste management must start from the early production stages in the food chain. Many products discarded later on in the production chain will increase the need for resource input further up in the

chain. We are talking about fairly substantial amounts of resources used. In Sweden, not being one of the major food exporters of the world, about 1/5 of the energy consumption goes towards food, about half of this coming from fossil fuels. It is interesting to note that about equal amounts of the energy are spent in agriculture, in the food industry, for transportation and retail, and for household and consumer use, respectively. Thus, in considerations of food waste management, it is important to consider the whole food chain to avoid sub-optimization of the system. The conceptual perspective must be from fork to farm and not just from farm to fork. LCA is an effective tool for identifying and quantifying the possibilities to reduce the environmental impact in waste management actions.

References
ISO. 1997. Environmental ManagementLife Cycle AssessmentPrinciple and Framework. ISO 14040. Stockholm, Sweden. LRF. 2002. Maten och miljn. (Food and environment) Publication by LRF, S-105 33. Stockholm, Sweden. Mattsson B, Sonesson U. 2003. Environmentally-friendly food processing. Woodhead Publishing Limited, Cambridge, UK. Sonesson U. 2001. Personal communication. SIK. E-mail usn@sik.se.
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