While the vast majority of food waste, perhaps 40% of the 133 B pounds annually, is generated in-home in the US, losses in manufacturing are also significant. In most raw processing plants and retail product production plants, waste is monitored and controlled carefully to control cost, and most plants have ways of recirculating ingredients or off-spec finished product back into the main process streams. Ice cream plants commonly rework off-spec lots into different flavors, and in production of extruded breakfast cereals it is common to use “rework” or left-over production to prime the extruder at the beginning of a run. Because in-process waste is expensive, there is an incentive for these plants to minimize waste and rework off-spec material back into finished product, usually at just a few percent.
There are products and processes where in-plant rework is difficult and waste ingredient or product must be sold as animal feed or landfilled. This usually is the result of allergen mixing, spoilage or high potential for pathogen growth, creating a significant challenge for re-use of such products.
We will explore potential uses of these more challenging in-process wastestreams, and identify possible uses in food and other consumer products.
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