Food Waste Properties

Abstract Nearly 1.3 billion tonnes of food is lost or wasted across the food supply chain. Of this, nearly 46% are generated during the processing, distribution, and consumer levels and are often designated as food waste. Because of the difficulty in identifying virgin finite natural resources, food waste is considered to be an alternative source and has been the focus of intensive research over the last two decades. The efficient utilization of food waste in different treatment technologies such as composting and anaerobic digestion is highly influenced by the physicochemical properties of the waste. The high moisture, rapid degradable nature of food waste initiates a cascade of events, for example, during composting, ultimately affecting the rate of degradation and/or stabilization. To overcome these limitations, an understanding of the properties of food waste is key. This chapter analyses the properties of food waste reported in the literature and their implications to different treatment technologies are highlighted.