Food waste solution at home: conventional and rapid composting techniques

Abstract

Food waste is a significant concern in waste management in recent years due to the inevitable outcome of human consumption in modern society. It has happened in almost every home daily. In Malaysia, 44.5% of organic waste (OW) consists of food waste (FW), this figure would increase with population growth. Therefore, without effective FW management, untreated FW dumping will cause environmental pollution, thus affecting human health as well as ecosystems. Conventional methods such as landfill and incineration have long been the most popular practice to address the FW issues, offering simple and cost-effective approach. Most of the time, these methods are not sustainable since they pose other environmental pollution such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and leachate contamination leading to groundwater pollutions. Other issues with landfills are that self-composting at landfill site takes a long time and most landfills in Malaysia are almost at full capacity. The composting technique has recently gained more attraction as a cost-effective and sustainable method for the FW issue. This paper reviews techniques of composting food waste at home by using a conventional natural and rapid process. The performance of each technique in terms of cost, sustainability, user-friendly and time are measured in this review. Finally, the future direction of food waste solution by sustainable composting technique is briefly discussed in this paper.