Identification and analysis of organic waste produced from Australian intensive livestock industries: opportunities for aggregation and treatment via co-digestion

摘要

On-farm, intensive feed and processing sectors from Australian red meat, dairy and pork industries produce significant quantities of waste. The management of these wastes is a significant cost for these industries exceeding A UD100-200 (-USD75-150) million per year. In addition, primary production and processing costs are rising and there is an ongoing need to improve productivity to maintain future industry profitability and environmental performance. Understanding key information gaps on waste composition and quantities in these industries is a fundamental step to fully realizing the opportunities in unlocking new revenue streams to produce energy products, fertilizers, feeds and chemicals for use in agriculture. One of the key strategies for ensuring the development of viable commercial outcomes from this research program is to underpin the work with research into the waste resources available in Australia and opportunities to aggregate the waste resources that can lead to new business models for adoption. This paper will provide a literature review of the work undertaken in this area. The critical evaluation scoped out available information, and data was collated from these various sources and synthesized. This process has confirmed that beef,pork and dairy industries all have varying information available on waste resources and overall there is a lack of high-resolution data available. This activity presents an opportunity to assist industries in waste resource recovery by achieving higherresolution data, through collaborations with Australian Biomass for Bioenergy Assessment (ABBA), Rural Research and Development Corporations (RDCs), industry stakeholders and regulatory bodies to garner specific information on co-digestion opportunitiesand interest in high value add products.