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Environmental mitigation potential of waste-to-nutrition pathways

Nature Sustainability volume 8, pages 385–395 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Processing underutilized bioresidues (for example, straw, manure and wood) into novel food and feed products such as fungi-based proteins, microbial proteins and insects represents ‘waste-to-nutrition’ pathways that are increasingly promoted to reduce the environmental impacts of food systems, including pressures on climate change, land and water resources. However, the actual environmental mitigation potential of this strategy depends on future technological advancements and contextual factors, which remain uncertain. Here we compare five conventional bioresidue valorization pathways with insect farming, microbial conversion and protein extraction by simulating their life-cycle assessment across 8,820 combinations of future process efficiencies, 9 food and energy systems scenarios and 11 representative bioresidues across France. Overall, processing bioresidues into novel ingredients is competitive only in certain conditions. These include access to decarbonized energy, substantial technological advancements and scenarios where novel ingredients replace meat rather than animal feed. The microbial conversion of woody residues, manure and sludge into feed will constitute the more sustainable valorization strategy only in contexts where current demand for animal-based food is maintained. However, the sustainability of this scenario must still be further appraised in terms of scaling these systems to a broader level.

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Fig. 1: Direct feeding or upgrading feed-grade streams to food environmentally outperformed the other valorization pathways.
Fig. 2: Recovering proteins from lignocellulosic streams outperformed energy recovery under specific conditions.
Fig. 3: Microbial protein production from nutrient-rich biowastes outperformed the other valorization pathways.

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Data availability

The datasets generated and analysed for this study are available via Dataverse at https://doi.org/10.48531/JBRU.CALMIP/PBS858 (ref. 69).

Code availability

The life-cycle inventory models are available in two repositories: conventional bioresidues management pathways (https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/b9sx3h3584/4)45 and waste-to-nutrition pathways (https://doi.org/10.48531/JBRU.CALMIP/UJVBTR)46. Custom scripts (Python version 3.12) developed to analyse the results and elaborate the visualizations are available on reasonable request to the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

This work received funding from the French National Research Agency and the Occitania region under grants no. ANR-17-MGPA-0006 and 18015981 (U.J. and L.H.). Additional funding was provided by the Metaprogram GLOFOODS INRAE-CIRAD, by the French National Research Agency under grant no. ANR-18-EURE-0021 (U.J.) and by INRAE’s Professor Chair on Sustainable Transition Towards Low-Fossil Carbon Economies (L.H.). M.P.’s and L.H.’s contributions were partly funded by the ALIGNED project under the Horizon Europe grant agreement no. 101059430. All the icons used in the visualizations are from www.flaticon.com and were made by Freepik, Monkik and Smashicon. The main investigation was developed as part of the PhD thesis of U.J. defended at INSA Toulouse (France) on 12 April 2023. We thank M. O’Donohue for proofreading the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. TBI, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, INRAE, INSA, Toulouse, France

    U. Javourez, L. Tiruta-Barna & L. Hamelin

  2. Department of Sustainability and Planning, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

    M. Pizzol

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  1. U. Javourez
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  2. L. Tiruta-Barna
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  4. L. Hamelin
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Contributions

U.J., L.T.-B. and L.H. conceptualized the project. U.J., L.T.-B., L.H. and M.P. developed the methodology. U.J. and L.T.-B. curated the data. U.J. conducted the formal analysis, carried out the investigation, visualized the results and wrote the original draft of the paper. L.H. acquired the funding and provided the resources. L.H., L.T.-B. and M.P. supervised the project, validated the results and reviewed and edited the paper.

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Correspondence to U. Javourez.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Alejandro Parodi, Sergiy M. Smetana and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Table 1 Key sensitive technological factors for bioresidues valorization pathways
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Extended Data Table 2 Key sensitive technological factors for bioresidues valorization pathways – continued
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Extended Data Table 3 Prospective food and energy systems scenarios
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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Information 1–4.

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Javourez, U., Tiruta-Barna, L., Pizzol, M. et al. Environmental mitigation potential of waste-to-nutrition pathways. Nat Sustain 8, 385–395 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01521-z

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