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Municipal food waste management in Singapore: practices, challenges and recommendations

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Abstract

Municipal food waste is a global challenge in solid waste management, especially in Singapore. It is scattered in location, non-ignorable in quantity, and non-uniform in quality. This report focuses on the state of the art and challenges of Singapore municipal food waste management for the first time. The previous studies only focus on general food waste from both industry and municipality. The physical properties of municipal food waste are incompatible to landfill and incineration by creating secondary environmental burdens and lowering treatment efficiency. A decentralized anaerobic co-digestion with other substrates, after comparing with other technologies, is recommended, since bio-energy is a recognized valuable final product in Singapore’s context. However, there are four major highlighted challenges of food waste recycling, including low final product demand, inefficient waste collection design, cheap disposal cost, and low social awareness. A “food waste management hierarchy” for Singapore is also proposed. The most to least preferred options are listed as: source reduction, industrial uses, renewable energy, and composting then incineration.

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Acknowledgments

This study is supported by the National Research Foundation, Singapore; program number NRF408 CRP5-2009-02, for the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering/Residues and Resource Reclamation Centre, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. We appreciate Mr. Harley Chia Guo Wei, Ms. Lim Jun Wei, Mr. Ivan Ho, and Mr. Ashiq Ahamed for their assistance in the experimental work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Residues and Resource Reclamation Centre, Nanyang Environment and Water Research Institute, Nanyang Technological University, #06-08 CleanTech One, 1 Cleantech Loop, Singapore, 637141, Singapore

    Bernard Jia Han Ng, Yu Mao, Chia-Lung Chen, Rajinikanth Rajagopal & Jing-Yuan Wang

  2. School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore, 639798, Singapore

    Jing-Yuan Wang

  3. School of Energy and Environmental Sciences, Yunnan Normal University, 121 Street, Kunming, 650092, China

    Yu Mao

  4. Dairy and Swine Research and Development Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 2000, College Street, Sherbrooke, QC, J1M 0C8, Canada

    Rajinikanth Rajagopal

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  1. Bernard Jia Han Ng
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  2. Yu Mao
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  3. Chia-Lung Chen
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Correspondence to Bernard Jia Han Ng.

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Ng, B.J.H., Mao, Y., Chen, CL. et al. Municipal food waste management in Singapore: practices, challenges and recommendations. J Mater Cycles Waste Manag 19, 560–569 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10163-015-0405-8

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