Value Added Products from Fruit Waste: A Systematic Review

Food waste contains hazardous compounds that can impact plants’ growth, pollute drinking water, and impact sea life, ultimately contaminating human food consumption. With approximately 1.3 billion tonnes of food wasted per annum, there is a need to mitigate the impact of waste from the different food processing sectors. Specifically, making use of waste from the vegetable and fruit processing sectors is a significant, albeit difficult, task in food sustainability. Numerous studies have explored the potential use of discarded fruits, including their waste materials, for further industrial purposes. Also, the extraction of functional ingredients, extraction of bioactive components, and fermentation of food waste from the vegetable and fruit sector is now the subject of extensive research. This is a systematic review of a selection of relevant original studies that assess the potential of upcycling selected food waste (particularly fruit waste)—turning food waste into ingredient item/s to produce value-added consumer products. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 guidelines underpin the method applied to the identification, eligibility evaluation and final selection of relevant studies. Findings from the review show the potential of repurposing selected fruit waste, using different methods, into added-value material for a wide range of products such as bioethanol, biohydrogen, ethanol, fertilisers, bio-oil and sanitary pads.