Reduce Food Waste

According to a rapid response assessment from United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in February 2009, it was reported that 200,000 people are added to the world food demand each day. Along with the growing demand for food comes the unavoidable increase of food waste, amounting to 1.3 billion tonnes or one-third of the world food. (“The Environmental Crisis”, 2009) Despite this, the problem about the increasing food waste lacks the attention needed for its proper waste treatment.

One type of food waste, the avoidable waste, can easily be managed and reduced because this type is caused by over purchasing and improper handling. (“Love Food”, 2012). On the other hand, Bagherzadeh et. al. (2014) noted that management and treatment of unavoidable

Some of the old and basic treatments include recycling and incineration while more effective and productive types of mechanical-biological treatment continue to be discovered and improved. (“Diverting Waste from Landfill”, 2009)

Wisely managing our food resource will not only save us money but would also reduce food waste. However, food waste such as peelings, plate scrapings, tea bags and bones, is simply unavoidable. Edible food wasted during pre-harvest to harvest, production, transportation, distribution and consumption is also part of the unavoidable type of food waste. (“Love Food”, 2012).

There are a few known effective methods of food waste treatment for certain types of waste. One example, by Akpan et. al. (2008) is called acid hydrolysis mainly used on cooked rice which is partially hydrolyzed from cooking. The advantage and disadvantages of this method were also stated in the study. An advantage of this method is its mobilization of starch and some of the cellulose and other organic compounds. The disadvantages of this is that it is expensive and it requires bulk handling of highly corrosive acids. Another method by Han and Shin (2002) uses microbial populations from ruminants as a source of acidophile microbes to breakdown cellulose and starches from waste rich in carbohydrate. However, the main products produced from this are

al. (2006), is the huge presence of lipids. Lipids of various kinds such as fats and oil poses physical problems when they aggregate into grease balls and fats and greases deposit on walls of plumbing and storage vats. (Cirne et. al., 2006) In order to break up the aggregates an emulsifying agent is needed and yeast is known for producing these. (Barriga et. al. (1999). In a research study by Suwannarat and Ritchie, yeast was reported to be efficient in digesting the troublesome lipid however it produced a low yield of alcohol compared to previous reports on similar substrates.

These studies show the advantage of using anaerobic digestion by converting wastes into renewable energy and the effectivity of yeast in dealing with the problematic lipids on food waste. However, the earlier study regarding the use of yeast on anaerobic digestion used the “baker’s yeast”, but the use of this strain resulted in poor alcohol yield. The current proposed study will use “brewer’s yeast” which generally produces more ethanol. Thus, the proposed study may serve as a discovery in seeking more effective ways of dealing with unavoidable food