Date of Award
1-2026
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
College/School
College of Science and Mathematics
Department/Program
Earth and Environmental Studies
Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair
Pankaj Lal
Committee Member
Neeraj Vedwan
Committee Member
Yang Deng
Committee Member
Vikas Khanna
Abstract
Food waste imposes substantial environmental, economic, and social burdens. The United States generates more than 66 million tons of wasted food annually, and New Jersey contributes approximately 1.48 million tons, with most still managed through landfilling (LF) and incineration (IC) despite the state’s statutory goal to reduce food waste by 50 percent (%) by 2030. Progress remains limited by fragmented evidence, inconsistent evaluation methods, and a lack of integrated assessments that connect climate impacts, economic performance, and long-term planning. This dissertation addresses these gaps by developing a unified framework that combines meta-analysis, life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle costing (LCC), and long-term diversion modeling to evaluate sustainable food-waste management pathways for New Jersey. Chapter 1 presents a meta-analysis of fifty economic studies and reveals substantial variation in cost estimates due to inconsistent system boundaries, coproduct crediting, and regional assumptions. Results show that composting (CP) and anaerobic digestion (AD) are often cost-competitive with disposal when coproduct revenues and avoided impacts are included. Chapter 2 develops a process-based LCA for AD, CP, IC, and LF using consistent boundaries and biogenic carbon accounting. The assessment shows that AD and CP deliver the lowest climate impacts through avoided fossil-fuel displacement, nutrient substitution, and reduced methane emissions. Chapter 3 constructs an aligned LCC model, integrating LCA results, coproduct benefits, and the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) to quantify net costs and carbon abatement potential (CAP). Findings show that AD and CP remain the lowest-cost pathways across all scenarios, including those with incentives and monetized emissions. Chapter 4 connects these integrated costs to a long-term planning model that compares proportional allocation with a cost-first (merit-order) strategy that prioritizes pathways with the lowest integrated costs relative to current business-as-usual waste allocations. Across all cost environments, the cost-first strategy achieves lower cumulative and annual system costs, faster reductions in LF and IC, and greater use of existing low-cost AD and CP capacity. Most long-term savings result from early deployment of high-value valorization pathways, indicating that environmental and economic outcomes reinforce rather than compete with one another. Overall, this dissertation provides a transparent, scalable, and policy-relevant framework that unifies meta-analysis, LCA, LCC, and optimization into a single decision-support structure. By aligning environmental and economic evidence with long-term diversion planning, the work fills a major gap in current food waste management research. It offers decision-makers a practical basis for designing cost-effective, climate-aligned food waste management for New Jersey and other urbanized regions.
File Format
Recommended Citation
Tariq, Zainab, "Sustainability Assessment of Food Waste Valorization Pathways for New Jersey" (2026). Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects. 1615.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/etd/1615