Abstract
Existing legislation mandates that the amount of waste being recycled should be increased. Among others, in its Resource Strategy Plan, the Danish Government decided that at least 60% of food waste generated by the service sector, including in office areas, should be source-sorted and collected separately by 2018. To assess the achievability of these targets, source-sorted food waste and residual waste from office areas was collected and weighed on a daily basis during 133 working days. Waste composition analyses were conducted every week to investigate the efficiency of the source-sorting campaign and the purity of the source-sorted food waste. The moisture content of source-sorted food waste and residual waste fractions, and potential methane production from source-sorted food waste, was also investigated.Food waste generation equated to 23. ±. 5. kg/employee/year, of which 20. ±. 5. kg/employee/year was source-sorted, with a considerably high purity of 99%. Residual waste amounted to 10. ±. 5. kg/employee/year and consisted mainly of paper (29. ±. 13%), plastic (23. ±. 9%) and missorted food waste (24. ±. 16%). The moisture content of source-sorted food waste was significantly higher (8%) than missorted food waste, and the methane potential of source-sorted food waste was 463. ±. 42. mL. CH4/g VS. These results show that food waste in office areas offers promising potential for relatively easily collectable and pure source-sorted food waste, suggesting that recycling targets for food waste could be achieved with reasonable logistical ease in office areas.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Journal | Waste Management |
Volume | 46 |
Pages (from-to) | 94-102 |
ISSN | 0956-053X |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2015 |
Keywords
- Waste Management and Disposal
- Biochemical methane potential
- Impurity
- Residual waste
- Sorting efficiency
- Waste composition
- Waste sorting bins
- Impurities
- Moisture
- Moisture determination
- Recycling
- Methane potential
- Potential methane productions
- Recycling targets
- Residual wastes
- Waste generation rates
- Waste sorting
- Methane