Sustainable use of tropical fruits? Challenges and opportunities of applying the waste-to-value concept to international value chains

Abstract

Agriculture and food science literature on waste-to-value applications that allow upcycling of by-product ingredients is increasing. However, this stream of research rarely takes an international trade and sustainability systems perspective. This focused review defines the term of waste-to-value and the sustainable development goals connected to it, and points to the tensions and questions arising when international trade is involved. Further, it exemplifies the challenges and opportunities of waste-to-value in tropical fruit trade through five cases of tropical fruit from South America: Green coconut, açaí, maracujá, cambuci, and jabuticaba. We present a model of the international supply chain that indicates where the opportunities of waste-to-value applications in international tropical fruit trade are situated, and discuss which future research questions need to be addressed to tackle the challenges of waste-to-value in global tropical fruit chains. Establishing the waste-to-value approach in the export of yet-underused tropical fruits can amongst others improve local employment, preserve natural resources, allow favorable use of side-streams in local energy production, environmentally friendly packaging material for transport, and add health functionalities to the end-consumer products, but challenges have to be solved in order to ensure these environmental and social benefits materialize.

Keywords:

• Sustainability
• tropical fruit
• international supply chain
• waste-to-value
• upcycled food
• side-streams valorization

Acknowledgements

This study as such received no funding. The authors met thanks to the funding of The Danish Agency for Science and Higher Education for the International Network Programme “Waste-to-value ideas for a sustainable food system: from product to market,” grant number 8073-00029B, which allowed a visit by a team from Aarhus University to Embrapa—Agroindústria de Alimentos in Rio de Janeiro. We are thankful to the further workshop participants from among the colleagues in Brazil and from Aarhus University for the fruitful discussion and ideas which provided a basis for the development of the manuscript.

Authors’ contribution

All authors participated in a workshop discussing the issues presented in the manuscript. JA-W suggested the structure in agreement with HRB and AR, and wrote the introduction, method, and background. ACSDC wrote the case of jabuticaba. AFF-M wrote the case of maracujá. HBR wrote the case of cambuci, AR wrote the case of açaí, and AGS and MJdOF wrote the case of green coconut. JA-W, UK, HRB and AR wrote the discussion. All authors contributed to the final version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no competing financial interests.