Assessment and bio-valorisation of by-products from food industry in Europe

Abstract

The EU Bioeconomy Strategy (EC, 2018) encourages the use of secondary bio-based resources to produce value-added products. However, the lack of harmonised information and quantitative data on the availability of these resources in different regions hinders the exploration of regional valorisation opportunities. In addition, the UN Sustainable Development Agenda (UN, 2015) does not outline targeted actions to manage food processing by-products, a type of secondary bio-based product, nor is there a uniform reporting procedure for by-products like the one for food waste in the EU (EC, 2019). This can result in under-reported resource flows and suboptimal usage. A study by De Laurentiis et al. (2023) carried out food loss, food waste and by-product accounting across the whole food supply chain in the EU using a material flow analysis approach. While the study provides a comprehensive overview of all the EU countries, it lacks detailed estimates for specific by-products. Haller et al. (2022) support the assumption that resource quantification can identify underutilised resource flows. Soloha et al. (2024) established a standard method for estimating the volume of specific food industry by-products and made estimates for eight Northern European countries. The present study uses the method developed by Soloha et al. (2024) to expand the geographical scope to other European (particularly EU) countries. This approach facilitates an overall estimation of by-products across the whole EU and enables comparison and identification of differences among individual countries.