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Two Wrongs Could Make a Right: Food Waste Compost Accelerated Polystyrene Consumption of Tenebrio molitor

Fu et al. | Jul 13, 2020

Two Wrongs Could Make a Right: Food Waste Compost Accelerated Polystyrene Consumption of <em>Tenebrio molitor</em>

Expanded polystyrene (EPS) is a plastic used to make food containers and packing materials that poses a threat to the environment. Mealworms can degrade EPS, but at a slow rate. Here, researchers assessed the impact of food waste compost and oats on the speed of EPS consumption by mealworms, superworms, and waxworms. A positive correlation was found between food waste compost supplementation and EPS consumption, especially by mealworms, indicating a potential industrial application.

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Time-Efficient and Low-Cost Neural Network to detect plant disease on leaves and reduce food loss and waste

Singh et al. | Apr 24, 2023

Time-Efficient and Low-Cost Neural Network to detect plant disease on leaves and reduce food loss and waste

About 25% of the food grown never reaches consumers due to spoilage, and 11.5 billion pounds of produce from gardens are wasted every year. Current solutions involve farmers manually looking for and treating diseased crops. These methods of tending crops are neither time-efficient nor feasible. I used a convolutional neural network to identify signs of plant disease on leaves for garden owners and farmers.

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The Effect of UV Treatment on the Degradation of Compostable Polylactic Acid

Zhang et al. | Nov 28, 2013

The Effect of UV Treatment on the Degradation of Compostable Polylactic Acid

Polylactic acid (PLA) is a bio-based, compostable plastic that is comparable in cost to petroleum-based plastics. This study aims to evaluate the effects of UV treatment and mechanical chopping on the degradation of PLA. Based on their findings, the authors propose an alternative PLA degradation process that may be more time and energy efficient than current processes.

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Repurposing citrus peel waste and its positive effects on our health and communities

Kim et al. | Feb 08, 2021

Repurposing citrus peel waste and its positive effects on our health and communities

Every year, more than 30% of food products go to waste. This is approximately 1.3 billion tons of food, which is equivalent to 1.3 trillion U.S. dollars. While conventional solid waste treatments and fertilization of food waste are common, citrus fruit peels require secondary applications and advanced disposal management due to their low pH values and high antimicrobial characteristics. Since citrus fruits are well-known sources of vitamin C and antioxidants, we hypothesized that their peels also contain high amounts of vitamin C and antioxidants. In our study, five common citrus peels including grapefruit, lemon, lime, orange, and tangerine, were used to determine the amounts of vitamin C and total soluble antioxidants.

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Heat impact to food’s shelf life - An example of milk

Xu et al. | Dec 13, 2022

Heat impact to food’s shelf life - An example of milk

Food spoilage happens when food is not kept in a good storage condition. Qualitatively estimating the shortened shelf life of food could reduce food waste. In this study, we tested the impact of heat on milk shelf life. Our results showed that an exposure at room temperature (25°C) for 3.2 hours will decrease the shelf life of milk by one day.

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Don’t Waste the Medical Waste: Reducing Improperly Classified Hazardous Waste in a Medical Facility

Hemani et al. | Jun 20, 2018

Don’t Waste the Medical Waste: Reducing Improperly Classified Hazardous Waste in a Medical Facility

Hemani et al. tackled the problem of rampant hospital waste by implementing staff training to help inform hospital workers about proper waste disposal. The authors observed a significant increase in proper waste disposal after the training, showing that simple strategies, such as in-person classroom training and posters, can have a profound effect on limiting improper waste handling.

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Effects of an Informational Waste Management App on a User’s Waste Disposal Habits

Rao et al. | Apr 28, 2021

Effects of an Informational Waste Management App on a User’s Waste Disposal Habits

While 75% of waste in the United States is stated to be recyclable, only about 34% truly is. This project takes a stance to combat the pillars of mismanaged waste through a modern means of convenience: the TracedWaste app. The purpose of this study was to identify how individuals' waste disposal habits improved and knowledge increased (i.e. correctly disposing of waste, understanding negative incorrect waste disposal) due to their use of an informational waste management app as measured by a survey using a 1-5 Likert Scale. The results showed that the TracedWaste app helped conserve abundant resources such as energy and wood, decrease carbon emissions, and minimize financial toll all through reducing individual impact.

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Differentiation of Waste Plastic Pyrolysis Fuels to Conventional Diesel Fuel

Jewison et al. | May 25, 2018

Differentiation of Waste Plastic Pyrolysis Fuels to Conventional Diesel Fuel

Plastic pollution and energy shortages are pressing issues in today’s world. The authors examined whether waste plastic pyrolysis fuels are similar to conventional diesel and, thus, a plausible alternative fuel. Results showed that waste plastic pyrolysis fuels did not match up to diesel overall, though several fuels came close in calorific value.

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Collaboration beats heterogeneity: Improving federated learning-based waste classification

Chong et al. | Jul 18, 2023

Collaboration beats heterogeneity: Improving federated learning-based waste classification

Based on the success of deep learning, recent works have attempted to develop a waste classification model using deep neural networks. This work presents federated learning (FL) for a solution, as it allows participants to aid in training the model using their own data. Results showed that with less clients, having a higher participation ratio resulted in less accuracy degradation by the data heterogeneity.

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