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How does the choice of food waste collection strategy affect the environmental performance of the food waste system?
Summary
Researchers compared food waste collection strategies — including paper bags, plastic bags, and optical sorting systems — on their climate and broader environmental impacts across anaerobic digestion and composting pathways, finding that paper bags in separate containers achieved the lowest climate impact and eliminated soil plastic contamination risk while also showing a collection-method effect on separation rates.
eq./person/year for composting. Collection in paper bags in separate containers results in the lowest climate change impact for both treatment pathways, but may increase other environmental impacts. For the AD pathway, there are relatively small differences between the results for the studied collection options. The use of paper bags, however, is likely to be the only option that eliminates the risk of plastic pollution in the soil from bags. The study identifies a potential "separate container effect": a higher separation rate is achieved with separate containers compared to the optical bag sorting system. This emphasizes how crucial the choice of collection method is for effective food waste management.