Waste management in food industry

Waste management in the food industry is the process through which food and other agricultural products are recovered or redirected for human consumption, animal feed, industrial uses, or environmental benefits. It matters at scale: according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), annually one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption gets lost or wasted, which makes recovery and reuse a commercial question for a processing plant as much as an environmental one.

Waste in a food plant is first classified as bio-degradable or non-biodegradable. Bio-degradable waste can be degraded and includes paper, wood, fruit peels and others. Non-biodegradable waste cannot be degraded and includes plastic bottles, old machines, cans, Styrofoam containers and others. This split governs which stream can be routed to recovery and which must be handled through disposal or recycling routes.

The major practices applied across food and beverage operations include recovery of food waste, recovery of fruit and vegetable wastes, treatment of dairy wastes, treatment of wheat starch, production of earthworm proteins, utilization of waste in animal feed, recovery of protein, fat extraction, silage production and the use of enzymes. Each of these turns a disposal cost into a recovered stream, and the choice depends on the product category and the waste the process actually generates.

Where waste is not managed wisely, the impacts extend well beyond the factory boundary: it affects our health, our socio-economic conditions, our coastal and marine environment, and our climate. PMG Engineering delivers end-to-end engineering design and construction management projects in the food and beverage industry, covering process engineering, project management, automation, food safety, and mechanical and electrical.