Poor waste management as well as excessively high consumption are among the reasons for air, water pollution and climate change. This issue is a matter of concern for every country irrespective of the level of development. While recycling or reprocessing pose technological challenges, organic waste can be easily managed to serve as an important resource that helps to develop sustainable agricultural models.
Organic waste in food systems plays a particularly important role as it is a valuable resource for restoring soil fertility. It helps to reduce a significant amount of waste while at the same time producing organic fertilizer that has a range of benefits compared to synthetic options. On one hand, it helps to reduce the amount of energy used to produce fertilizers and, on the other, promotes circularity in the local agriculture and food systems. One of many such examples comes from a women-led organisation in Armenia that has been successfully transforming organic waste into a marketable product that helps to reduce large amounts of organic waste while supporting the shift to organic agriculture.
Waste struggle
The International Day of Zero Waste is celebrated on 30 March and helps to promote both sustainable production and sustainable consumption, raising awareness of the importance of zero-waste initiatives as well as supporting circularity in all areas of production. Waste is an issue that is common to both developed and developing countries. In developed countries, where the sorting and recycling of waste is more advanced, the amount of waste is still high and is linked to consumerism. Thus, in the USA the average American creates 4.5 pounds of trash each day and much of this is organic with organic residues such as paper making up 66% of the municipal solid waste stream. At the same time, in the European Union, an average citizen generated about 4.8 tonnes of waste in 2020 while only 39.2% of this was recycled.
Meanwhile, the developing world is facing another form of challenge. As their economies are usually not as advanced and the purchasing power of consumers is lower, these countries produce less waste. At the same time, their waste management systems are weaker, with small or sometimes even absent infrastructure and capacity for sorting and recycling waste which is therefore rarely collected on a regular basis and ends up in landfill where it piles up and decomposes in an unattractive and dangerous environment for people.
Linear agriculture and food systems
Conventional agriculture and food systems also contribute to the production of disposed and hazardous waste. There is the problem of plastic containers being disposed of after the use of toxic agrochemicals as well as the use of synthetic fertilizers which leads to a range of long-term environmental and health risks, while such valuable resources such as organic residues and biomass are wasted instead of re-entering the production cycle.
These issues arise due to the linear nature of food production systems which is characterised by the unidirectional use of resources. Neither the plastic from agrochemicals nor food packaging is returned to the production cycle (in the best case it is burnt) nor, in many cases, is the organic waste from food consumption returned to the soil to restore soil fertility. While plastic, in all its forms and varieties, represents a separate technical challenge, organic waste is much easier to address as its transformation into compost and fertile soil does not require complex technologies but instead a basic knowledge of soil ecology and monitoring.
Biomass and organic waste
In natural systems, there is no waste as everything becomes part of the cycle whereby every component is used as a source for something else. In agroecological approaches such as permaculture, farmers are aware of the importance of circularity and actively use both the biomass resulting from pruning trees for mulching and the organic waste coming from food preparation and consumption. This model is closer to those that exist in nature and therefore is highly efficient because it reduces the costs of production as farmers do not need to purchase fertilizers. For this reason, compost is called ‘black gold’ by some farmers and it contributes to a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by using less energy in its production and there is less pollution from the fertilizers and waste.
See also: Energy-smart agricultural systems: decoupling oil from food production
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO),
“On-farm composting has the advantage of being easily done by farmers and, more importantly, this approach can help mitigate the negative impacts associated with the issue of fertilisers availability..”
Armenian case: biohumus for environmental and financial sustainability
In some countries, farmers and civil society have been mobilizing and capitalizing on organic waste to achieve both financial and environmental sustainability for farmers.
“Being an agroecologist by background, it was my professional dream to create a company which can close the environmental loop, to take care of organic waste and transform it into a resource for another production,” says Lusine Nalbandyan, Co-Founder and CEO of Organic Processing Company ORWACO CJSC, the Armenian company transforming waste into organic fertilizers.
The company does not view organic waste as a source of environmental pollution but rather as a valuable resource of natural fertilizers. Since 2011 the women-led organisation ORWACO in Armenia has been transforming organic waste, which in Armenia represents about 40% of total household waste, into marketable products – organically certified fertilizers. It currently sells biohumus, bio liquid, granulated biohumus, and other products to local farmers who thus use natural fertilizers to grow healthy and safe crops.
By acknowledging the role that natural processes play, ORWACO demonstrates that non-waste production is possible and brings many benefits to both producers and consumers. The experience in Armenia shows that the production of biohumus helps to develop the organic fertilizer production, sales, and consumption sectors. It raises awareness and drives the demand among farmers for organic fertilizer and also contributes to the development of a culture of more efficient organic waste processing. Most importantly, however, this initiative shows the benefits of a circular rather than the linear approach in agriculture and food systems.
