Preface
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Published:09 Oct 2013
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Special Collection: 2013 ebook collection , ECCC Environmental eBooks 1968-2022 , 2011-2015 food science subject collectionSeries: Green Chemistry
The Economic Utilisation of Food Co-Products, ed. A. Kazmi and P. Shuttleworth, The Royal Society of Chemistry, 2013, pp. P005-P006.
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Food is a fundamental requirement for all living beings on Earth and it is everyone’s right to have their fair share. It is surprising that in the 21st century we still have around 815 million people that are undernourished and 16,000 children die every day due to hunger-related causes. A report by the World Institute states that the richest 1% of adults owned 40% of the world’s assets in the year 2000. While such disparities exist, it will be difficult to alleviate food poverty in the world; however, as individuals we can all do our bit.
In Europe alone we waste 30% of food we produce, which is alarming when we know that this material could be utilised elsewhere. Domestic waste could be reduced by composting food waste and there has been a major effort in the UK to instigate such activities. Aside from domestic waste, there is a huge opportunity to utilise industrial food waste and this book focuses on this very matter. Industrial food waste tends to be collected in a controlled way and normally has some low-value use. With growing demand on petrochemical feed stocks it has been evident from recent price fluctuations that this is not a reliable and sustainable carbon source for the future. The spikes in crude oil prices observed in 2008 caused global chaos and mass food shortages of staple materials such as rice and corn in poverty-stricken countries like Bangladesh. It would be wrong to accredit such problems just to the petrochemical economy because it is well known that the extensive biofuels program in the USA also had a direct impact on global food supplies. Biofuels are a complicated subject because the sustainability impact depends on so many things. For example, where there is ample land and water, such as in Brazil, biofuels can be produced sustainably without affecting the local agricultural requirements. However, in other places like India where much attention has been given to plants like Jatropha that can grow on brownfield land without much effort, it is not sustainable to produce biofuels because water is diverted from agricultural crops. To avoid such issues in this book, we decided to focus on side streams and wastes from the food supply chain. We need to treat such side streams from a biorefinery perspective where the word “waste” does not exist. The biorefinery concept is based on the utilisation of a wide variety of biobased raw materials that are processed using advanced, efficient and clean technologies that generate food, chemicals, materials and energy for society.
The book starts with an introduction to the biorefinery concept and Green Chemistry. As food is so critical to human society, and is mainly controlled by governments, Chapter 2 is dedicated to international food waste policy. In terms of converting food waste into valuable chemicals, we have chosen a state-of-the-art process that we believe is one of the most promising technologies of the future; microwave pyrolysis. Thermochemical conversion of biomass is a simple and efficient method of obtaining high-value chemicals from any type of biomass and Chapter 3 is dedicated to research developments in this field. The book then focuses on end products derived from food waste and their industrial applications. For example, many chemicals derived from food waste can be efficiently used in the environmental and agricultural fields as discussed in Chapter 4. Waste starch from the food manufacturing industries is rich in polymer networks and can be used as a backbone for many adhesives, latexes and coatings and this is discussed in great detail in Chapter 5. Another waste from the food industry is waste cooking oil that can have huge environmental problems as it is not readily biodegradable. Chapter 6 discussed key chemistries that could be employed to convert cooking oil into biofuels but also valorise any side streams such as glycerol. Chapter 7 focuses on the mechanical conversion of agricultural byproducts such as rapeseed meal and sunflower cake into biodegradable materials.
We would like to personally thank all the authors who have contributed to this book and wish them fortune in their personal and work-related goals. It has been a great pleasure to work with some of the worlds leading academics and we hope this book makes a beneficial contribution to science and society.
Dr Abbas Kazmi
University of York