AUTHOR=Danevad Daniel , Carlos-Pinedo Sandra TITLE=Exploring Interactions Between Fruit and Vegetable Production in a Greenhouse and an Anaerobic Digestion Plant—Environmental Implications JOURNAL=Frontiers in Sustainability VOLUME=2 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainability/articles/10.3389/frsus.2021.770296 DOI=10.3389/frsus.2021.770296 ISSN=2673-4524 ABSTRACT=

Greenhouse fruit and vegetable production uses large amounts of energy and other resources, and finding ways of reducing its impact may increase sustainability. Outputs generated from solid-state anaerobic digestion (SS-AD) are suitable for use in greenhouses, which creates a need to investigate the consequences of the possible interactions between them. Connecting the fruit and vegetable production with the resource flows from an SS-AD process, e.g., biogas and digestate, could increase circularity while decreasing the total environmental impact. There are currently no studies where a comprehensive assessment of the material flows between greenhouses and SS-AD are analyzed in combination with evaluation of the environmental impact. In this study, material flow analysis is used to evaluate the effects of adding tomato related waste to the SS-AD, while also using life cycle assessment to study the environmental impact of the system, including production of tomatoes in a greenhouse and the interactions with the SS-AD. The results show that the environmental impact decreases for all evaluated impact categories as compared to a reference greenhouse that used inputs and outputs usually applied in a Swedish context. Using the tomato related waste as a feedstock for SS-AD caused a decrease of biomethane and an increase of carbon dioxide and digestate per ton of treated waste, compared to the digestion of mainly food waste. In conclusion, interactions between a greenhouse and an SS-AD plant can lead to better environmental performance by replacing some of the fertilizer and energy required by the greenhouse.