2020 Annual Conference

Organic waste disposal is posing a major threat to global environment and affects our food security. Globally, the food production accounts for lots of resources utilization (e.g. fossil based fertilizers and energy), while it is also the major cause for loss of 80% biodiversity, 70% freshwater resources and 30% greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, one third of produced food is simply wasted without being consumed and subsequently being incinerated or sent to landfill, permanently loss from the nutrient cycle. Food waste is in fact our biological resources that still have residual intact energy, carbon, and major and minor nutrients that should be recycled to work towards a biocircular economy. Therefore, it is timely to develop an integrated biotechnology to re-route the resources in biowaste for production of fuels, energy and value added products. Efficient recycling of food waste will benefit and support the bio-economy concepts by converting biowaste into: (a) Bio-energy and Bio-fuels, that will greatly reduce the dependence on fossil fuel and the production cost of associated fuel/energy; (b) Bio-fertilizers, that can improve the soil health and reduce the use of fossil fuel based commercial fertilizer; (c) Bio-products, including new bio-products and industrial biochemical such as bio-pigments, bioplastics and etc.; (d) Bio-feed, that can be used for the production of animal feeds and fish feeds, reducing the arable land and water use. The biocircular economy approach not just reutilizes the biological resources in food waste but also  reduces GHG emissions, provides more job opportunities,  and reduces the waste treatment and disposal cost. However, the key issue is to select a technology or integration of technologies for food waste treatment should be based on local need, economy and availability of resources. In this presentation, the various innovative biological treatment technologies for the production of multiple end-products from food waste will be discussed with major research focus on bio-methane, bio-fertilizers and bio-lipid productions from food waste.