Environment and sustainability approach to manage sweet bakery waste product

Abstract

Globalization and environmental regulations force organizations and producers to adopt sustainability in every aspect of their business. The concept of sustainability in manufacturing is now achieving maturity; however, there is still an opportunity to explore sustainability in perishable food items. The growth of population worldwide increased the amount of waste produced by the food industries. Enterprises worldwide use procedures to overcome the disposing of perishable waste into landfills, which has noticeable impacts on the environment and the business itself. However, these procedures may not be sufficient and lead to disturbance of the ecosystem. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to develop a framework to conduct experiments using Design of Experiment (DOE) to produce fertilizer using expired doughnuts from a well-known sweet bakery company in the United Arab Emirates. Firstly, we will develop a framework, implement waste management on perishable products such as doughnuts, and apply environmental, economic, and social development through recycling and composting it into fertilizers to be used for agriculture needs. Secondly, to study the impact of different parameters such as water, sand, doughnuts in different percentages on plant growth and survival. Results show that wasted doughnuts are suitable for fertilizer and the best plant due to interaction between all three factors: commercial fertilizer percentage, doughnuts percentage, and doughnuts size.

Keywords: Bakery products; Design of experiment; Sustainability; Waste management.