Life cycle environmental impacts of using food waste liquid fodder as an alternative for pig feeding in a conventional Cuban farm

This work aimed to compare cleaner production alternatives for pig production in the Cuban context through the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach emphasizing the utilization of food waste (FW) as a substitute for traditional grain -based pig feeding. A conventional waste management method (lagooning) was assessed, including more environmen-tally friendly approaches (use of anaerobic digestion (AD) process); including the substitution of a fraction of solid fod-der with food waste liquid fodder (LF), obtained from food waste. The analysis was based on one porcine equivalent livestock unit. The environmental impact categories assessed were global warming, terrestrial ecotoxicity, human car-cinogenic toxicity, freshwater ecotoxicity, terrestrial acidification, and freshwater eutrophication. The major environ-mental benefits for pig production were observed when the maximum capacity of pigs was considered. In addition, favorable environmental performance was achieved by considering the substitution of solid fodder by LF, the AD as a waste management process, and the valorization of the solid and liquid effluents. The avoided products-related ac-tivities were the main contributor to freshwater ecotoxicity, human carcinogenic toxicity, and terrestrial ecotoxicity impact categories (up to 71 %). The sensitivity analysis showed that the variation in LF composition (protein concen-tration) could have a remarkable impact in all impact categories. Climate change performed as the more sensible im-pact category, suggesting that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, such as CO2 and N2O, are important drivers to change the environmental impact and need more attention. This research demonstrates that the environmental profile of the process can be improved by applying a cleaner production approach (AD as a waste management alternative and LF substituting solid fodder).