Sustainability assessment of food waste solutions, Callie Babbitt, Rochester Institute of Technology

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Food waste is a critical sustainability challenge at the food, energy, and water nexus: vast energy and water resources are consumed in food production, but over 30% of food will never reach human consumption. In the United States, food waste is typically landfilled, resulting in greenhouse gas emissions as well as social and economic costs. Circular economy offers a portfolio of solutions to transform this linear food system into one that retains value, recovers resources, and reduces systemic sustainability impacts.

However, these solutions face barriers to widespread adoption, particularly due to complex interactions between infrastructure, environment, and economy. For example, food waste treatment via anaerobic digestion can generate biogas used for fuel or electricity, but economic viability depends on spatial distribution of food waste feedstocks, regionally variable tipping fees, presence of contaminants, and state-level renewable energy and climate policy. Anaerobic digestion also produces byproducts, including a nutrient-rich digestate that may be beneficially used for agriculture but can also contain microplastics and lead to downstream emissions and ecological impacts.

This presentation will overview interdisciplinary research that uses concepts and methods from Sustainable Engineering and Industrial Ecology to identify and analyze the actors and interactions necessary to create sustainable food waste solutions. Case studies focused on New York State are used to demonstrate the role of firms, consumers, technology, system design, and policy as enablers of food waste management and evaluate potential interventions in terms of their technical and environmental benefits and trade-offs.

Dr. Callie Babbitt is a Professor of Sustainability at Rochester Institute of Technology. Her research group uses methods from circular economy, eco-design, and industrial ecology to create sustainable solutions for food systems, consumer electronics, plastic wastes, lithium-ion batteries, and electric vehicles. Callie co-directs the Multiscale RECIPES for Sustainable Food Systems research network. She has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Georgia Tech and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from University of Florida. Callie is a Fulbright U.S. Scholar and a recipient of the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career (CAREER) Award and the AT&T Technology and Environment Award.