Every year, close to 8 million tons of waste crab, shrimp and lobster shells are produced globally, as well as 10 million tons of waste oyster, clam, scallop and mussel shells. The disposed shells are frequently dumped at sea or sent to landfill, where they modify soils, waters and marine ecosystems. Waste shells are a major by-product, which should become a new raw material to be used to the best of their potential. There are a number of applications for waste shells in many fields, such as agriculture, medicine, chemical production, construction, environmental protection, cosmetic industry, food and feed industry, and a plethora of other (often niche) applications, which are being developed by the day. This review provides a broad picture of crustacean and mollusc shell waste management and reutilization possibilities, reviewing well established, current, and potential strategies, particularly from the standpoint of sustainability challenges and energy demand.

Matrix‐assisted laser desorption/ionization time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry (MALDI‐TOF MS) is an excellent tool for bacterial identification. It allows high throughput, sensitive and specific applications in clinical diagnostics and environmental research. Currently, there is no optimal standardized protocol for sample preparation and culture conditions to profile bacteria. The performance of MALDI‐TOF MS is affected by several variables, such as sample preparation, culture media and culture conditions, incubation time/growth stage, incubation temperature, high salt content, blood in the culture media, and others. This review thus aims to clarify why a uniformed protocol is not plausible, to assess the effects these factors have on MALDI‐TOF MS identification score, and discuss possible optimizations for its methodology, in relation to specific bacterial representatives and strain requirements.