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Crop residue, such as corncob, and other residues from the food processing industry, such as residues from biorefineries, have high potential for use in further processes, such as producing biofuel, bioplastics, and other biomaterials for industrial processes.^[11][12]

One of the more fruitful fields of work is food waste—when deposited in landfills, food waste produces the greenhouse gas methane and other toxic compounds that can be dangerous to humans and local ecosystems.^[11] Landfill gas utilization and municipal composting can capture and use the organic nutrients.^[11] Food waste collected from non-industrial sources is harder to use, because it often has much greater diversity than other sources of waste—different locations and different windows of time produce very different compositions of material, making it hard to use for industrial processes.^[11][12]

Transforming food waste to either food products, feed products, or converting it to or extracting food or feed ingredients is termed as food waste valorisation. Valorisation of food waste offers an economical and environmental opportunity, which can reduce the problems of its conventional disposal. Food wastes have been demonstrated to be valuable bioresources that can be utilised to obtain a number of useful products, including biofertilizers, bioplastics, biofuels, chemicals, and nutraceuticals. There is much potential to recycle food wastes by conversion to insect protein.^[13]

Reuse of human excreta is the safe, beneficial use of treated human excreta after applying suitable treatment steps and risk management approaches that are customized for the intended reuse application. Beneficial uses of the treated excreta may focus on using the plant-available nutrients (mainly nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium) that are contained in the treated excreta. They may also make use of the organic matter and energy contained in the excreta. To a lesser extent, reuse of the excreta's water content might also take place, although this is better known as water reclamation from municipal wastewater. The intended reuse applications for the nutrient content may include: soil conditioner or fertilizer in agriculture or horticultural activities. Other reuse applications, which focus more on the organic matter content of the excreta, include use as a fuel source or as an energy source in the form of biogas.

There is a large and growing number of treatment options to make excreta safe and manageable for the intended reuse option.^[14] Options include urine diversion and dehydration of feces (urine-diverting dry toilets), composting (composting toilets or external composting processes), sewage sludge treatment technologies and a range of fecal sludge treatment processes. They all achieve various degrees of pathogen removal and reduction in water content for easier handling. Pathogens of concern are enteric bacteria, virus, protozoa, and helminth eggs in feces.^[15] As the helminth eggs are the pathogens that are the most difficult to destroy with treatment processes, they are commonly used as an indicator organism in reuse schemes. Other health risks and environmental pollution aspects that need to be considered include spreading micropollutants, pharmaceutical residues and nitrate in the environment which could cause groundwater pollution and thus potentially affect drinking water quality.

Landfill gas is a mix of different gases created by the action of microorganisms within a landfill as they decompose organic waste, including for example, food waste and paper waste. Landfill gas is a type of biogas, which is approximately forty to sixty percent methane, with the remainder being mostly carbon dioxide. Landfill gas often contains nitrogen gas that is pulled in from the atmosphere during collection.^[16] Trace amounts of non-methane volatile organic compounds (VOCs), siloxanes, and hydrogen sulfide comprise the remainder (<1%). These trace gases include a large array of species, mainly simple hydrocarbons.^[17]

Landfill gases have an influence on climate change. The major components are CO₂ and methane, both of which are greenhouse gases. Methane in the atmosphere is a far more potent greenhouse gas with a global warming potential of 27 over a one-hundred year period.^[18] Landfills are the third-largest source of methane in the US.^[19]

Because of the significant negative effects of these gases, regulatory regimes have been set up to monitor landfill gas, reduce the amount of biodegradable content in municipal waste, and to create landfill gas utilization strategies, which include gas flaring or capture for electricity generation.

Food loss and waste is food that is discarded or otherwise lost uneaten. This occurs throughout the food system, during production, processing, distribution, retail and food service sales, and consumption. Overall, about one-third of the world's food is thrown away,^[21][22] and a huge amount of resources used in food production are wasted^[23]. A 2021 meta-analysis by the United Nations Environment Programme estimated that global food waste amounted to 931 million tonnes annually (about 121 kg per person) across three sectors: 61 percent from households, 26 percent from food service and 13 percent from retail.^[24]

Food waste is addressed through prevention (e.g. by food preservation), reuse (e.g. food donation), animal feed, or recycling. Discarding food in landfills is to be avoided because it is a major source of the greenhouse gas methane.^[25] Reducing food waste in all parts of the food system is an important part of reducing the environmental impact of agriculture, by reducing the total amount of water, land, and other resources used.

Wasted food is a major part of the impact of agriculture on climate change (it amounts to 3.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions annually^[26][27]) and other environmental issues, such as land use, water use and loss of biodiversity. It also conflicts with food insecurity in parts of the world. The UN's Sustainable Development Goals seek to "halve global per capita food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses" by 2030.^[28] In the 2022 United Nations Biodiversity Conference nations agreed to reduce food waste by 50% by the year 2030.^[29]