Integrating food waste management into urban wastewater treatment: Economic and environmental impacts

Food waste is the main component of municipal solid waste (MSW) and its sustainable management is a global challenge. Co-treatment of food waste and urban wastewater in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) could be a plausible management strategy to reduce the MSW amount that is disposed in landfills, while converting its organic fraction into biogas in the WWTP. However, the increased organic load in the wastewater influent would impact the capital and operating costs of the WWTP, mainly due to the increase in sludge production. In this work, different scenarios for co-treatment of food waste and wastewater were studied from both economic and environmental perspectives. These scenarios were designed based on different sludge disposal and management options. The results showed that the co-treatment of food waste and wastewater would be more environmentally friendly than their separate treatment, but its economic feasibility strongly depends on the ratio between the management costs of MSW and sewage sludge.

Automated summary

Food waste is a major component of municipal solid waste and its sustainable management is a global challenge. Co-treatment of food waste and urban wastewater in wastewater treatment plants can reduce landfill disposal while converting organic waste into biogas. However, this co-treatment can increase capital and operating costs due to the higher sludge production. This study analyzed different scenarios for co-treatment of food waste and wastewater from economic and environmental perspectives, and found that its feasibility depends on the ratio of management costs between municipal solid waste and sewage sludge.