Life cycle assessment of food waste management options: a case study at campus level to foster sustainable campus

ABSTRACT

This study aims to evaluate the environmental impact savings by different food waste management options of a university campus to support decision-making in the scope of sustainable campus. For this purpose, food waste generated inside the campus was characterized, and a hypothetical anaerobic digestion plant with a biogas recovery system was modeled. Two scenarios, representing the modeled plant, and current practices (landfilling and energy production methods) were formed, and life cycle assessment was conducted. For the modeled plant, the biogas and methane yields were calculated as 0.66 and 0.36 l/g VS, respectively, and generated electricity and heat were found as 92.6 and 188.9 kWh/day, respectively. Impact assessment results showed that global warming and acidification potential are the main impacts resulting from the current practices. More than 88% of impact savings can be achieved in all assessed impact categories by shifting to anaerobic digestion. In the scope of campus sustainability, 23% and 16% of the electricity and heat demand of the selected building on the campus can be supplied which results in 7%, 5%, 5%, and 4% impact reduction on campus level for global warming, photochemical ozone formation – impact on vegetation, terrestrial eutrophication, and acidification, respectively. Our results suggest that micro-scale changes may also provide a considerable amount of environmental impact savings.

KEYWORDS:

• Life cycle assessment
• food waste
• university
• sustainability
• global warming
• anaerobic digestion

Acknowledgements

Thanks to TUBITAK-MRC for their support in laboratory analysis and Mr Mahir Alp for plant drawings.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15567036.2023.2196952

Data availability statement

All data generated during this study are included in this published article and its supplementary information files.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Merve Tunali

Merve Tunali studied environmental engineering and business administration and completed her PhD in environmental sciences after which she received various grants/awards. Currently, she works for Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, where her main focus is on microplastics, life cycle assessment, and safe and sustainable by design. She is also contributing to a project on the transmission of the Zika virus as a visiting scholar. On the other hand, she is actively involved in sports and currently leads a local ice hockey and ice skating sports club.

Volkan Coban

Volkan Çoban is an Assistant Professor in Energy Systems Engineering at the University of Kocaeli, where he has been a faculty member since 2016. Volkan completed his Ph.D. at Kocaeli University and his undergraduate studies at İstanbul Technical University. His research interests lie in the area of renewable energy, anaerobic digestion and waste management. He has collaborated actively with researchers in several other disciplines of process engineering, environmental engineering, chemical engineering and agricultural engineering. Dr. Coban is an experienced engineer with a background of more than 19 years of both industrial and academic experience. He has been responsible for the research and development of several projects for advanced thermal treatment technologies, such as biogas, anaerobic fermentation and biomass projects. Volkan is 41 and has one son.

Ahmet Baban

Ahmet Baban has been working as a senior research scientist at TUBITAK Marmara Research Center for 32 years. He is conducting research and development activities for related applied national and international projects on mainly water, wastewater and waste management fields. His main research focuses on sustainable sanitation and water reuse, advanced treatment technologies, zero emission buildings, integrated urban water management, climate change impacts on water and sanitation, circular economy, zero liquid discharge, cleaner production applications, reuse/recycle and energy production from wastes, textile industry, food industry waste management, biological solid waste management, integrated water management for coastal zones, catchments and river basins.

Nilgün Kıran Cılız

Prof. Dr. Nilgün Kıran Cılız graduated from Istanbul Technical University (ITU), Department of Chemical Enginetering and continued her doctorate studies at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, on the topic of “Energy and Petrochemicals from Plastic Wastes” and completed at Boğaziçi University, Institute of Environmental Sciences. She is currently continuing her academic career as a full-time faculty member at Boğaziçi University, Institute of Environmental Sciences. She is the founder director of Boğaziçi University, Sustainable Development and Cleaner Production Center (BU-SDCPC) since 2007. Currently she is the vice director of Boğaziçi University Finance Center. Additionally, she has been coordinating Boğaziçi University’s Sustainable and Green Campus Program applications since 2010 at different managing positions. Besides these, she has been taking different responsibilities at United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (UN-SDSN) Turkey since 2014. Before her academic career at Boğaziçi University, she worked as a Senior Researcher at TÜBİTAK-MRC, Institute of Energy and Environmental Research for six years. During this period, she became one of the first six “National Cleaner Production Specialists” of Turkey after completing a three-year applied and certified training program from the Danish Technological Institute. Prof. Kıran Cılız completed her post-doctoral studies on “Life Cycle Assessment” at the Technical University of Denmark, Institute of Product Development. She has been coordinating various types of projects on integration of eco-labeling approach into life cycle assessment studies for different industrial production sectors. She received UNDP “Rio+20 National Success Story Award” for her study on LCA application in cotton textile industry which covered the collaboration of all related stakeholders for the life span of a single t-shirt. Her specialties are the projects about energy and chemical recovery from wastes and production of biofuels from residues. She has finilized projects for municipalities on technical and managerial levels for integration of regional sustainable development issues. She has been awarded with the National Zero Waste Award by Prime Ministry of Turkey. Currently she carried out projects in environmental sustainability applications for various production and service industries within the content of ecological foot print analysis. Furthermore, under the coordination of Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change Ministry, she finalized projects on criteria development both for eco-labelling applications in selected industries and is also involved in zero waste facility certification for Turkey. She has just started coordination of project for National Action Plan for Sustainable Consumption and Production which is supported by Ministry of Environment Urbanisation and Climate Change. She also took the moderation responsibility of Cleaner and Circular Economy Working Group for Waste Management Policy Development for Turkish Presidency Science, Technology and Innovation Policies Council. Prof. Kıran Cılız is currently undertaking the role of National Focal Points for different international organizations. She has been working for the advisory committee or evaluation board of various international and national associations and foundations, advising on cleaner production and sustainable consumption patterns and resource conservation issues. She has been a member of Turkish National Environment Agency Steering Committee since July 2021.