Food Waste Life Cycle Assessment

With the rapid development of social economy and the improvement of livingstandards, the amount of solid waste generation increasing continuously has become a bigchallenge for the local authorities. Since the percentage weight of organic waste is about40%to60%, dealing with organic waste is of great concern. In this paper, life cycleassessment （LCA） was used for assessing the environmental impacts of organic waste indifferent scenarios encountered in real-world applications. Using LCA in food wastedisposal can not only do a comprehensive analysis and assessment of food wasteenvironmental impact of the entire process, and can provide a reliable basis formanagement decision-making departments.On the basis of the study of LCA theory and food waste disposal technology, thispaper study food waste management LCA systematically, and establish an evaluationmodel. And use this model in Shenzhen waste separation pilot. The results of theevaluation of six modes of food waste disposal is6.13×10^-1,8.39×10^-2,2.71×10^-2,2.57×10^-2,6.19×10^-2,1.11×10^-2in environmental impact potential. The results shows scene1has the highest environmental impact potential, scene2’s value is second, in line withthe international mainstream research. The environmental impact of scene1and scene2ishigher than others, indicating that owing to participating of people in waste separation,environmental impac of waste disposal will reduce. In this paper, scene6has the lowestenvironmental impact, indicating that conversion of solid waste to wastewater treatmentwill reduce the environmental impact. And the environmental impact of anaerobicdigestion and composting is low.Moreover, environmental impact of food waste disposal is related to many factors.The most important factors are CH₄, CO₂and NO_x^-, and these pollutants should be controlin the first place in food waste disposal.