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Life cycle assessment and circular economy in conjunction with treatment methodologies: Presentation and critical comparison between different food industry waste
Summary
This review applies life cycle assessment (LCA) principles and circular economy thinking to evaluate environmental impacts across several food industry sectors including dairy, meat, and packaging. While not focused on microplastics, it provides methodological tools relevant to assessing the full environmental cost of plastic food packaging.
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) principles coupled with Circular Economy are well described in this review addressing LCA examples worldwide. Applications of LCA in the food industry are well outlined with examples from the dairy sector and dairy effluents, meat sector (pork), poultry and eggs, coffee, fish canning, animal feed and used cooking oil. LCA is then explained as a management strategy in the food packaging sector. One of the best methodologies for food waste or bio-waste is anaerobic digestion with production of biogas. This review shows the effect of food, energy, water on human life. Hence, we all should be aware that our interventions might affect all these food sectors positively or negatively as well as our lives in general.
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