Abstract
Waste prevention and the recycling of organic waste, including food waste, are the two main pillars of environmental load reduction. In the food lifecycle, food waste prevention is highly effective in the reduction of greenhouse gases (GHG), and this approach should therefore be more extensively developed and implemented. It is, however, unavoidable that our society does dispose of certain amounts of food waste. We should shift our focus more toward the use of bio-gasification technologies and composting as effective means for recycling the food waste being generated.
From the aspect of environmental and resource sustainability, it also becomes important to utilize renewable materials for various products, which relates to the curving of greenhouse gas emissions. We conducted an investigation on the status of disposal and recycling of containers and packaging, doing a comparative study on recycling systems for both fossil-fuel based plastics and bio-based plastics. The result of our scenario analysis based on this lifecycle study shows that utilization of bio-based plastics can successfully achieve a 14-20 % reduction in GHG emissions.
