Familiarity breeds acceptance: Predictors of residents' support for curbside food waste collection in a city with green bin and a city without

Treating waste with waste: Treatment of textile wastewater using upcycled food waste as a pore-forming agent in the fabrication of ceramic membranes employing DOE/FFD design

This study investigates a novel method for food waste management by using it as a sustainable replacement for conventional pore-forming agents in ceramic membrane production. The membranes were analyzed using various techniques, including X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and a universal testing machine. The morphologies of the membranes were observed using scan electron microscopy (SEM). The effects of particle size (45-125 μm), pore-forming agent (5-20 wt%), and sintering temperature (900-1150 °C) on the porosity and mechanical strength of the membranes were investigated using the Design of Experiments (DoE) and Response Surface Methodology (RSM). The optimized membrane was evaluated for its performance in filtering industrial textile wastewater. It achieved impressive results, with approximately 98.4 % removal of turbidity and 71.3 % removal of chemical oxygen demand. This research paves the way for optimizing ceramic membrane fabrication using upcycled food waste, promoting sustainability and offering potential solutions for both food waste management and industrial wastewater treatment challenges.

The Proof Is in the Pudding: Using a Randomized Controlled Trial to Evaluate the Long-Term Effectiveness of a Household Food Waste Reduction Intervention During the COVID-19 Pandemic

To halve per capita global food waste by 2030, policies and programs that effectively reduce household food waste generation are needed. Building upon a previous randomized controlled trial, this study evaluated the long-term effectiveness of the "Reduce Food Waste, Save Money" household food waste reduction intervention by comparing direct measurements of household food waste generated by treatment (n = 47) and control households (n = 52) over three time periods. The results indicate that there has been a long-term, sustained 30% reduction of avoidable food waste sent to landfill by treatment households following the implementation of this intervention. Additionally, this study assessed the impact of pandemic circumstances on the quantity and composition of household food waste by comparing direct measurements of food waste generated by the same households before (October 2017) and during (June 2020) the COVID-19 pandemic. During the first wave of the pandemic in Ontario, Canada, study households (n = 99) sent 2.98 kg of food waste to landfill per week, of which 54% was classified as avoidable food waste, and the remaining 46% as unavoidable food waste. During the pandemic, the generation of unavoidable food waste significantly increased by 65% (p < 0.01). There were also significant changes to the composition of wasted food, including a 78% increase in avoidable fruit and vegetables (p < 0.01), a 228% increase in avoidable other food (p < 0.01), and an 84% increase in unavoidable other food (p = 0.02).