Restaurant Waste Recycle and Disposal

Food waste, particularly originated from restaurants, has become an appearing issue as a point source pollutants to land, water, and air (i.e., greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions). The management and recycling of restaurant food waste have thus become a key priority for restaurant owners to mitigate the food waste amount that they generated. This chapter reviews information on the sources, composition, and characteristics of restaurant waste. The environmental policy and regulation of food waste worldwide, as well as in selected Asian countries, were also briefly presented, followed by the main discussion of this chapter related to management, recycling, and disposal of restaurant food waste. Various options/methods to handle or convert food waste to the valuable product were reviewed, which includes feeding livestock, composts/fertilizers, biogas from anaerobic digestion, and various biobased chemical building block. This chapter ends with the case study, where two case studies were discussed related to lactic acid production from the food waste collected from the restaurant located at the ATB Potsdam, Germany, and the potential biorefinery products from the conversion of food waste obtained at the restaurant in Monastiraki Square and Plaka, Athens, Greece.