The use of life cycle-based approaches for the recovery of by-products from the durum wheat chain

Durum wheat, the third most cultivated cereal worldwide, due to increasing mechanization is posing challenging problems arising from the production of processing by-products, such as wheat husk (WH), which accounts for 17-20% of the total weight of production. However, WH is often disposed of through dumping on the land, although it still contains high-value bioactive compounds (e.g., antioxidants, phenolic compounds, etc.). In light of this, this study aims to assess the sustainability of grain by-product recovery using Life Cycle Assessment. Next, to evaluate the performance of the best recycling scenario, two were considered: S1) landfilling of waste; S2) extraction of bioactive composites, and in this case the Carbon Footprint was used. The results show that the milling process has the lowest environmental impact in all impact categories, while grain production has a high resource impact, with 6.61 × 10‒1 $. Crop management systems are the largest contributors to all categories considered, with an average percentage of about 80%, while a possible valorization of wheat milling by-products as an alternative to landfilling could induce a saving of 0.63 kg CO2 eq, a GWP reduction of 10%.