SLU news

Food waste becomes new food - a nutrient loop in the urban context

Published: 20 November 2018

The research group Horticultural Production Physiology at BT has received funding from FORMAS for food and consumer project in a circular and innovative food chain. The project will be performed between 2019-2021 in collaboration between BT and AEM at SLU Alnarp, Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment at SLU Ultuna and LTH, Lund University.

The focus in waste treatment is currently changing from residues treatment towards resource recovery. This drives a development towards source-separated waste and wastewater systems. In these new treatment systems food waste are collected and subjected to anaerobic degradation, for biogas production, without being mixed with wastewater or other sewage. There are obvious benefits from an environmental perspective in developing urban/local use of the anaerobically digested food waste. Thus, the present project focus on an innovative use of this resource, to allow urban production of healthy food such as oyster mushrooms and new types of leafy vegetables such as Pak Choi. The project addresses a complex area and implies a societal change towards a nutrient loop in the urban context, a prerequisite for the transition towards a biobased society but with hurdles at different levels of the societal context such as legislation, mainstreams beliefs, habits and limitations in knowledge. The project is therefore set in a broader interdisciplinary context including risk assessment and consumer acceptance. The obtained results for indicators relating to crop yield and quality, fate of pollutants (micropollutants, heavy metals, foodborne pathogens) and consumer acceptance of these production systems will assist in further implementation and development of circular food production systems.

The project group at BT: Karl-johan Bergstrand, Håkan Asp and Malin Hultberg.


Contact

Malin Hultberg, Senior Lecturer and External Collaboration Specialist
Department of Biosystems and Technology, SLU
malin.hultberg@slu.se, +46 40-41 53 25, +46 73-023 15 74