ABSTRACT
The increasing demand for food sources to feed the growing population results in enormous amounts of food wastes each year. The term food waste mainly covers the discarded streams obtained from food processing facilitates, e.g. pomace, seed, stem and bran, and the leftover foods from household consumption and food delivery services such as in hotels and restaurants. Food waste assessment is considered one of the major challenging factors for sustainable development with potential far-reaching adverse effects due to its environmental, social, and economic impacts on a global basis. Food waste valorization strategies including anaerobic digestion, composting, and use as raw material provide the advantage of exploiting abundant and inexpensive sources to recover valuable nutrients and bioactive compounds having high potential market value, rather than landfill disposal and incineration operations. The valorization of waste and by-product fractions of feedstocks especially in agro-industrial origin is beneficial to ensure sustainability in terms of environmental aspects. Food waste valorization has been a trending topic among food and environmental scientists especially in the past 10 years. Based on recent trends, this chapter provides a comprehensive research-based viewpoint for food waste valorization in line with environmental benefits and sustainability manner. In this regard, the utilization of nutrients and bioactive compounds from food wastes are presented with practical examples and potential solutions, by evaluating the recovery mechanisms and potential applications in different industries.
