Valorization of Food and Agricultural Waste: A Step towards Greener Future

With the progress in technology and population, an enormous amount of agricultural and food waste is being generated throughout the world. In the past, food and agro-wastes were either burnt off or allowed to rot in fields, but this can be potentially hazardous to the environment. Therefore, approaches with respect to their utilization, reuse, and processing need to be developed to enable the sustainable utilization of feedstock and reduce pollution. Agricultural wastes mainly comprise of cellulosic fibres possessing high fixed carbon content and multifunctional groups. Agricultural waste shows considerable applicability due to its high strength, environmentally benign nature, low cost, and ease of availability and reusability. All these characteristics have been researched upon in the past, in the sector of waste water management for the removal of heavy metals and dyes. Similarly, a variety of food and agro-waste has been adopted as sources for new drug leads or important phytochemicals with different therapeutic benefits. Agro-waste can also be employed for enzyme immobilization after proper modification. Apart from this waste cooking oil comes under the category of food waste and can be processed to prepare alternate energy source such as biodiesel. This personal account summarizes the development, processing, and application of food and agro-waste in the production of biodiesel, environmental remediation, curative medicine, and in the development of biocatalysts, by researchers in our laboratory.