Unlocking New Value from Urban Biowaste: LCA of the VALUEWASTE Biobased Products

The VALUEWASTE project can offer a sustainable solution to transform biowaste into added-value bioproducts, such as proteins from microorganisms and insects and biofertilizers. The present study focused on the environmental impacts linked to obtaining these bioproducts, which was performed by the standardized Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, using the Environmental Footprint methodology to evaluate the midpoint impact categories considered. At the same time, the bioproducts coming from biowaste were compared to regular ones: other protein sources and mineral fertilizers. The study results show that these new protein sources are firm candidates to reach the market from an environmental point of view. Furthermore, their environmental impacts could be improved by reducing the energy use (the main contributor) within some impact categories, such as ecotoxicity and global warming. In case of the biofertilizers, their environmental performance was overall worse compared to mineral fertilizers, except for the following impact categories: mineral and metal use and water scarcity. Nevertheless, these biofertilizers come from biowaste, extending the circularity concept, and from local places, reducing the dependency on other actors. Hence, the study showed that the obtained bioproducts are real alternatives to implement in a circular economy. However, continuous improvement of the solution should be performed.