Green and Sustainable Separation of Natural Products from Agro‑Industrial Waste: Challenges, Potentialities, and Perspectives on Emerging Approaches

Vânia G. Zuin, Luize Z. Ramin

This review outlines the literature on the separation of natural products from agro-industrial waste. It is comprehensive and descriptive of the developments in this very important area. The "agro-industrial waste hierarchy" and the "Holistic biorefinery model" are excellent visual aids (see paper below)

• The global food waste of approximately 1.3 billion tons per year is shocking and cannot be completely prevented nowadays. 
• Primary and secondary processing generates unpreventable food supply chain waste. This can be due to a number of factors along the supply chain.
• In general terms, developing countries such as some African countries suffer the greatest loss during the early, upstream part of the primary processing, corresponding to 75% of food losses during production and post-harvest. 
• Various initiatives, e.g., building better infrastructure through knowledge transfer (more efficient storage and transport technologies) and improving collaboration and market opportunities in the food supply chain could have a positive role. 
• In industrialized countries, waste occurs especially in the consumption stage, accounting for 50% of overall loss of crops in some countries of North America, Europe, and Oceania. 
• In this case, together with educational and cultural actions, other aspects such as developing legislation to make date labels more user-friendly for consumers (sell-by, best-before, and consume-by), redesigning packaging characteristics (avoiding the “buy 1 get 2” offers) and retailer marketing strategies should be considered.