Food waste causes tremendous problems in terms of environment and economy, twined with big social influence, thus studies on food waste are essential and meanwhile very complicated According to Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), 1.3 billion ton/year of food are wasted globally, which has a total carbon footprint of 4.4 GtCO2 eq per year with a cost of USD 411 billion. According to statistics, China has roughly 195 million tons food waste per year, which is huge. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which is an internationally standardized method by ISO for assessment of product and process, has been applied in food sectors to evaluate the different environmental influence, energy use etc. This paper analyzed some of the LCA application on the different parts of the food supply chain (production, post-harvest handling, the storage and transportation, processing, the retail, and consumption) where food waste is generated and on the food waste disposal stage, looked into what has been studied in the context of China, and gave recommendations for LCA application for Chinese food waste problems: 1) More application of LCA on food waste should be made on the early stage of the food cycle rather than just the kitchen waste; 2) Besides global warming potentials, other environmental influences should be studied more at the same time; 3) Food waste treatment can be studied using LCA broadly considering mixture with other substrates and using different recycling methods; 4) LCA based on a local context with local data/inventory are strongly needed; 5) further more detailed studies to support an elevated food waste management, such as food waste profile can be developed.

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) play a crucial role in mitigating microplastic (MP) release to the environment. In this paper, a WWTP of a textile manufacturing plant in Guangdong, China, was investigated to identify MP characteristics and the effectiveness of wastewater treatment within the plant. Laser Direct Infrared (LDIR) and Liquid Chromatography with Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) were applied to quantify both the number and the mass of the microplastics in the effluent of the textile manufacturing plant where most of the wastewater were from three printing and dyeing lines. The study further investigated the MP removal efficiency of each wastewater treatment process of the industry-owned WWTP and analysed the removal mechanism of each step, highlighting limitations in detecting and eliminating MPs. It is observed that (1) the results from LDIR and LC-MS/MS can be complementary to each other; (2) the MP concentration in the influent was 1730 n/L by number and 13.52 µg/L by mass; (3) the total removal efficiency of the WWTP were 99% by the number of MPs and 67.7% by the mass of MPs; (4) nine types of polymers have been identified in the influent, of which Polyamide (PA) was dominating; (5) hydrolysis acidification removed PA most; (6) aerobic tank, sand filter, and biological aerated filter (BAF) showed low removal efficiency; (7) coagulation and sedimentation tank had the highest removal efficiency to PET than any other processes.