The Waste Production of Fresh Tomato Packinghouses

For one of the first links of the food-supply chain, the fresh fruit and vegetables packinghouses,
abundant in Spain, Italy and Holland, the information on the amounts of waste generated and on their
seasonal fluctuation are scarce. Nevertheless, the industrial approach of these farms and their narrower
geographic dispersion, when compared to growers, represent an advantage for a waste valorizzation
system planning. The knowledge achieved on this matter could represent an useful tool for waste
management decision-makers, which, nowadays, have to take into account the principle of minimizing
landfilling by maximizing resource recovery and reuse (Hogg et al., 2003). With this in mind, we
evaluated the waste stream of tomato packinghouses operating in SE Sicily, one of the greatest
protected cultivation areas in Italy, aiming at characterizing this unstudied aspect of an important
agroindustrial sector and at obtaining preliminary data for a bio-waste management system planning.