Plants in the Circular Bioeconomy: From Waste to Wealth

Introduction

Despite the adequate amount of food present on this planet to feed every person, still about 1 in 11 people go to sleep on an empty stomach every night, and more than 3 million children lose their lives around the world (Action against Hunger) (World Food Program USA). Where has the food gone?

 

According to FAO Worldwide, 9.9 billion tons of primary crops are produced every year (Agricultural production statistics 2010-2023). Yet substantial amounts are lost, including fruits, vegetables, roots, and tubers, accounting for an estimated 520–650 million tons of losses annually. Even in developed countries like the USA, every year, almost 2.7 million tons of vegetables and fruits that do not meet aesthetic standards remain unharvested. Issues like overproduction, natural disasters, pests, labor costs, and poor handling across pre-harvest, harvest, and post-harvest stages lead to food waste (Gonçalves et a. 2025). Reducing these losses is therefore an important first step. Good agricultural practices, good handling practices, hazard analysis and critical control points, green technologies, and resource recovery can help to reduce agricultural waste. Approaches such as improved harvesting and handling, smart packaging, edible coatings, advanced defect detection, cold-chain management, ozone and cold-plasma treatments can help keep edible plant foods in use for a longer period. But when plant waste cannot be prevented, it does not necessarily have to be the end of the story. The remaining plant materials like peels, husks, seeds, stalks, pomace, and other residues can still have value as a source for bio-based materials, renewable energy and other useful products (The Institute of Sustainability Studies).

 

Reduce crop wastes

Together, these approaches shift the question from how we dispose of plant waste to how we prevent it, preserve its value and, ultimately, keep plant resources circulating within the economy. And here, the circular bioeconomy comes into the picture with an aim to shift agricultural residues from a linear “take-make-waste” system to a closed-loop farming system.

Through biotechnology, biorefining, and other processing approaches, agricultural residues can be transformed into bio-based materials and useful energy. Advanced technology and digital tools are being integrated into it in order to reduce the carbon dependency on fossil fuels, mitigate greenhouse gases, cultivate a sustainable environment, and leverage biological resources. Circular Economy is an emerging approach for sustainable decision-making about recovering and reusing biological waste, but circularity alone should not always be considered as a central theme. Economic costs, environmental benefits, and broader effects on society must be counted along with other factors.

In this view, the central goal is beyond the use of every available residue, especially to find uses that create the greatest overall value while contributing to a more sustainable food and agricultural system (Afsah-Hejri et al. 2025) .

 

Plants as a partner for a sustainable economy

As the world population is increasing, the pressure to produce more food with limited agricultural land and resources is increasing. Worldwide, almost 70% of freshwater is utilized by the agriculture sector alone (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations [FAO], n.d.).

The Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that 18% of available cultivated lands, 21% of water, and 19% of fertilizer are consumed for the uneaten portion of agricultural products. Even agriculture is one of the main sources of water pollution in many higher-income countries. Overcropping, excess fertilizer use, industrialized farming, pesticides, and leaching of topsoil and micronutrients are some of the major factors that impact water quality.

An average of 81 million hectares of cropland is burned annually, releasing methane and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and contributing to 25% of total greenhouse-gas emissions. Even 8-10% of global anthropogenic GHG emissions come from food waste alone (Afsah-Hejri et al. 2025)  (Cao et al. 2026).

Every year, the world produces more than five billion metric tonnes of agricultural residues (AlSuhaimi and AlSehli 2026). Statistics from the literature indicate that more than 10 million tons of farm-based food are wasted annually in the United States either by extreme weather, pest and disease infestation, or because of high labor costs and fluctuations in market prices (World Wildlife Fund [WWF], n.d.). These numbers are truly a matter of concern and hold up a mirror to the future.

It is essential to understand and implement effective waste management practices throughout the food chain, which could include utilizing crop residues and reducing post-harvest losses.

 

Agricultural residues to sustainable products

Transforming the agri-food system into a circular bioeconomy is an appealing strategy to convert agri-waste into eco-friendly output and is critical to fulfilling a growing population’s food and fuel needs in environmentally sustainable ways.

Agricultural biomass, including crop residues and food waste, can be an excellent source of raw material within circular production systems, which ultimately reduce dependency on finite resources and return biomass-derived resources back to agriculture.

One important pathway is the recovery of functional compounds and biomaterials from fruit-processing residues. For example, Gluconacetobacter or Komagataeibacter species use orange and citrus peel as a food source to produce cellulose via fermentation, while pectin can be recovered from apple and citrus peels.

Apples and grapes are widely used to make products such as juice, cider, and wine, but processing them leaves behind pulp and pomace but processing them leaves behind pulp and pomace. These residues are being tested as a feedstock for polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs)  that naturally decompose in marine and soil environments. Researchers succeeded in extracting about 49% PHA from grape pomace and 63% from apple pulp, which can be further used in food packaging (Afsah-Hejri et al. 2025).

The AgriLoop project has demonstrated that agricultural side streams including cereal residues, tomato peels, and fruit processing waste can be converted into PHAs (Agriloop Project 2025).

 

“Crop-wastes” are not wastes

As Nathalie Gontard, Research Director at INRAE and joint coordinator of the EU-funded AgriLoop project, puts it: “We’re sitting on a significant resource that is currently disposed of or used in low-grade applications. Approximately 50% of all harvested crops become agricultural residues. That’s billions of tons of underutilized materials that could be converted into valuable feedstocks for products ranging from biodegradable plastics to sustainable protein alternatives” (Agriloop Project 2025).

We often eat bananas and simply throw away the peel. But the waste does not end there: each banana stem produces fruit only once and is removed after harvest. Thanks to science, these leftovers can find more than one second life. Fibers extracted from the post-harvest pseudo stem serve as textile raw material, including sanitary pads, to a sustainable additive in cement (Ruangnarong et al. 2024) (Yang et al. 2025), while its peels powder has been transformed into bioplastic film. This film has shown a good extent of antioxidant and UV-blocking activities, hence a reliable source for food packaging (Silva et al. 2024).

Even the chocolate we eat is generally a mixture of cocoa and sugar. Even the leftover parts of these crops could also help make its wrapper? Researchers have combined cellulose extracted from cocoa-pod husks with sugarcane-bagasse fibers to produce bioplastic films for food packaging. One day, cocoa beans and sugarcane could provide the chocolate, while their processing leftovers help provide the material that wraps it (Azmin et al. 2020).

Have you ever imagined that the spent tea leaves you usually throw away after brewing your tea could be turned into a bioplastic film? Researchers have shown that spent tea leaves from industrial tea brewing can be dried, ground, and processed into hydrophobic bioplastic films (Liu et al. 2020).

Scientists have also unlocked the secret to making plasticizers from plant waste. Conventionally, petroleum-based plasticizers give flexibility to plastics, which have some negative effects on the environment and societal health. They synthesized polysaccharide plasticizer from chemicals extracted from citrus peel and cashew nutshell waste using green extraction methods (Huang et al. 2025).

Rice is one of the world’s most important food crops, but feeding is just one side of the coin. The large amounts of straw and husk left behind after harvesting and processing create a major disposal challenge. Researchers are now finding ways to turn these residues into useful materials. For example, rice husk ash contains almost 90% silica. Silica-rich ash from rice husk has been incorporated into cellulose-acetate films for light-shielding healthcare packaging  (de Freitas et al., 2026). At the same time, paddy straw (parali), which is often burned in northern India and contributes to seasonal air pollution, is being turned into useful materials instead. Researchers have explored paddy straw for wastewater treatment and green composites. Even recently, a new composite material has been developed by mixing paddy straw powder with PLA biopolymer to create sustainable products like trays, plates, nursery pots, etc (Punjab Agricultural University [PAU], n.d.).

Agricultural wastes can also be biologically converted into value-added chemicals. For example, pomegranate peel has been investigated as a substrate for citric acid production using Aspergillus niger, with a reported yield of 0.78 g citric acid per gram of pomegranate peel. Similarly, fermentation of apple pomace with Rhizopus oryzae produced fumaric acid at 52 g kg⁻¹, while other fruit residues have been investigated to produce lactic, malic, succinic, acetic, and tartaric acids. (Afsah-Hejri et al. 2025).

These examples show how plant-processing leftovers can be converted into biochemical feedstocks rather than being discarded. Food-processing waste is not just waste; it can also be an opportunity for innovation. Instead of treating it simply as waste, valorization supports the circular bioeconomy by processing it into useful products and reducing pressure on resources.

 

 

Harnessing plant matter as a renewable energy source

How can plant biomass provide renewable energy?

When we talk about the circular economy, we talk about reusing and recovering resources rather than introducing something from outside. This approach helps minimize production costs and reduce waste. When it comes to implementing this concept to generate renewable energy from agricultural biomass, it helps to find secondary ways to use agricultural waste through valorization techniques such as the waste-to-energy method to process waste into bioenergy  (Afsah-Hejri et al. 2025).

When you think of renewable energy, you probably picture solar panels or wind turbines. Plants can also expand our renewable energy reserve to fulfill the energy requirement for growing population.

Plants use photosynthesis to store sunlight energy in the form of chemical energy in their biomass. This biomass can be transformed into renewable bioenergy. Biogas is produced when bacteria break down plant biomass in sealed, oxygen-free tanks, a process called anaerobic digestion. This technology is widely studied and can process agricultural residue on a large scale. The process converts organic residues into biogas (which can generate fuel, cooking gas, and electricity) and digestate (a nutrient-rich soil conditioner) (Stoner et al. 2026). Even research shows pre-treated wastewater can yield up to 2.8% more biogas and 64% more methane than untreated wastewater (Vigneshraj et al. 2025)

Agricultural waste, food residues such as the leftover residues of C3 and C4 plants like wheat straw and corn cobs, sugarcane, and switchgrass, can be recovered into biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel, hence providing an alternative to fossil fuels. Beyond biofuels and biogas, scientists are now using cellulose and lignin to generate eco-friendly batteries. These green batteries can control large-scale heavy metal mining and protect natural resources from being overexploited (Morrison. 2024) (Khanna et al. 2024).

More importantly, instead of growing separate crops to generate energy, organic residues left after farming and food processing can be used as biomass feedstocks. (National Geographic Society. 2026).

An exciting example comes from a California case study. This study highlights how adapting a bio-circular economy strategy can help to build a sustainable society and food system. A simple circular approach can turn waste into wealth. Instead of discarding the orange, mandarin, and other citrus peels, apple pomace, olive pomace/mill waste, berry residues, and pomegranate peels, they can be utilized as a substrate for bioethanol production, whereas citrus peel and olive pomace can further be explored as a potential feedstock for biodiesel (Afsah-Hejri et al. 2025).

Although we often classify biomass as a renewable source, it is not always the case, nor is every type of biomass-based bioenergy is clean energy. Its sustainability varies with several impact factors such as its source material, water use and harvesting, method of processing, way of transportation, and end use and associated emissions (National Geographic Society, 2026).

Integration of bioenergy, agroforestry and environmental restoration can help to boost carbon sequestration reservoirs. This tripod framework can significantly lead to better carbon credits, clean energy production, as well as financial support for green initiatives (Ólives. 2024).

 

Transforming “crop wastes” into daily life products

Imagine building your home with straw. Wearing clothes made from banana stems. Packing your lunch in containers made from corn starch. These are not futuristic fantasies, but they exist today.

Hempcrete is one of the most exciting developments in sustainable construction. Made by mixing industrial hemp shives with a lime-based binder and water, hempcrete is lightweight, highly porous, and offers both thermal insulation and thermal mass (Hirao-Vermare and Kavgic 2026). But its most remarkable feature is its ability to store carbon. One cubic metre of hempcrete wall can store approximately 165 kilograms of carbon dioxide (Norouzi and Dixit 2026). A recent life cycle assessment confirmed that hempcrete acts as a carbon sink, with net emissions of –12.09 kg CO₂-equivalent per square metre (Yazdanseta & Mi 2025). In other words, building with hemp actually removes carbon from the atmosphere.

Rice husks are finding new life in construction. Researchers have shown that raw rice husk can replace up to 40% of manufactured sand in cement blocks, addressing the environmental damage caused by sand mining (Thavarajah et al. 2025). These blocks demonstrate adequate compressive and tensile strengths, with the 40% replacement achieving an average compressive strength of 3.57 MPa, surpassing minimum requirements for non-load-bearing masonry units (Gautam et al. 2026). The blocks are also lighter, making them easier to handle and transport, which is a significant advantage in rural and eco-conscious construction (Thavarajah et al. 2025).

The best part? We are not cutting down forests or using land that could grow food. We are simply using what is already there, the parts of plants we usually throw away.

 

The Challenges We Face

Turning plant waste into treasure sounds simple, but there are real obstacles.

Technology challenges:

Scaling up bioconversion technologies to industrial levels while maintaining cost-effectiveness and efficiency remains a major hurdle. Integrating biorefineries into existing industrial supply chain systems and overcoming technical, economic, and regulatory challenges can be complex and costly (Yazdanseta & Mi 2025). The main challenges to scalability in bioconversion processes include energy-intensive pretreatment techniques, low efficiency of conversion, and high cost of production (Gautam et al. 2026). For PHAs, commercialisation challenges persist due to higher production costs compared to conventional plastics (Yazdanseta & Mi 2025).

Collection challenges:

Plant waste is scattered across millions of farms. While agro-industrial residues are concentrated at processing sites (which lowers collection burdens compared to field-dispersed biomass), collecting, transporting, and storing waste from dispersed farms remains expensive and complicated (AlSuhaimi and AlSehli 2026). The lack of coordination between different stakeholders and fragmented waste management policies create additional barriers (Gautam et al. 2026).

Economic challenges:

Scaling is constrained by limited technical capacity, infrastructure gaps, policy fragmentation, and high investment costs (Gautam et al. 2026). The main barrier identified by stakeholders is lack of financial resources and capital, along with price competitiveness with traditional linear product offers (Yazdanseta & Mi 2025).

Environmental questions:

We need to be careful. While cascading approaches enhance resource efficiency, there are technical thresholds to consider. Quantitative thresholds for anaerobic-digestion inhibition and membrane fouling must be addressed, indicating that upstream removal of long-chain fatty acids, polyphenols, and other compounds is required before effective biological conversion (AlSuhaimi and AlSehli 2026). We must balance using plant waste for products with leaving enough on the land to keep soil fertile.

 

What is being done to fix these problems?

Better technology:

Scientists are developing new extraction methods using natural deep eutectic solvents (NADES) —green, sustainable alternative solvents that are highly efficient at extracting plant bioactive compounds. NADES are being utilized to extract value-added compounds from agricultural biomass thanks to their biodegradability, cost-effectiveness, and low toxicity. For example, a study on cotton byproducts found that a proline-citric acid NADES extracted phenolics at 2.2 times and gossypols at 4.8 times the yield of conventional ethanol extraction. The extracts exhibited marked antifungal, nematicidal, and insecticidal activities, outperforming synthetic controls (Wu et al. 2025).

Policy support:

The European Union adopted a new Bioeconomy Strategy in November 2025, setting out a plan to transition Europe towards a circular, nature-based economy. The strategy emphasises promoting circularity by enhancing the value of secondary biomass, including agricultural residues, by-products, and organic waste, laying the groundwork for a true circular bioeconomy (Strategic Framework for a Competitive and Sustainable EU Bioeconomy 2025). The bioeconomy already contributed up to €2.7 trillion in 2023 and employed 17.1 million people, around 8% of EU jobs.

International cooperation:

The AgriLoop project brings together researchers from Europe and China to develop new ways of turning agricultural waste into valuable products. The AgriLoop consensus, formalized in Beijing in April 2025, brings together the collective knowledge of 64 leading research institutions, policy experts, and industry partners from both regions. The framework proposes a joint China-EU certification system for low-carbon, circular products to simplify cross-border trade, with implementation validated via pilot demonstration sites in Bordeaux, France, and Shandong Province, China (Agriloop project 2025).

The AgriLoop consensus outlines four pillars of implementation: building capacity and public support through a China-EU Young Scientists Exchange Programme; advancing scientific collaboration through the China-EU Joint Laboratory for High Value Biorefining; creating market pathways through certification systems and pilot demonstration sites; and removing regulatory roadblocks by integrating agricultural residue transformation into carbon neutrality strategies. Notably, the framework challenges the EU’s current regulatory classification of naturally produced, biodegradable bioplastics as “single-use plastics,” arguing that policies designed for a linear economy are inadvertently stifling critical sustainable innovation (Agriloop project 2025).

 

The Future: What’s Next?

Emerging technologies to watch

Precision fermentation:

Using microbes to turn plant sugars into proteins, fats, and other valuable compounds without needing animals. Precision fermentation is an emerging biotechnology that uses genetically modified microorganisms to produce proteins, fats, biochemicals, and vitamins with high accuracy, mimicking traditional animal and plant sources. Researchers have developed a process model for a semi-batch plant producing 10,000 tonnes per year of precision fermentation protein using sucrose, cheese whey permeate, sugarcane molasses, and bagasse as feedstocks (Verma et al., 2026). Studies have also explored using solid agrifood side streams including soybean and yellow pea pods, stems, leaves, and brewer’s spent grain as feedstock for microbial protein production (Eevi et al. 2025).

Biochar:

Burning plant waste in a low-oxygen environment creates a charcoal-like material called biochar that improves soil health and stores carbon. As a stable form of carbon, biochar can sequester carbon in the soil for hundreds to thousands of years. Biochar application improves soil structure, promotes water-holding ability, and increases cation exchange capacity, consequently enhancing nutrient retention and plant growth (Waheed et al. 2024). A study on olive pomace found that biochar showed high stability and strong aromaticity for long-term carbon sequestration, with a carbon sequestration potential estimated at 2.6 tonnes CO₂-equivalent per tonne of biochar applied (Chingui et al. 2025).

Green chemistry:

New solvents made from plants themselves (called natural deep eutectic solvents) can extract valuable compounds from plant waste without toxic chemicals. These solvents represent an efficient and greener alternative to conventional organic solvents for extracting value-added compounds from agricultural biomass (Wu et al. 2025). A study on tomato waste successfully used NADES combined with ultrasound-assisted extraction to recover carotenoids and tocopherols, valuable antioxidants, from what would otherwise be discarded peels (Badea et al. 2025).

Smart farming:

Sensors and artificial intelligence help farmers decide which residues to keep for soil health and which to sell for processing. Decision science, AI, and machine learning tools are being developed to capture stakeholder preferences, link agri-residues to profit estimates, and optimize feedstock-to-product pathways (AlSuhaimi and AlSehli 2026).

Composting and organic recycling:

Composting has proven to be an effective method for processing over 85 to 99 percent of food waste. Bioconversion technologies such as composting, anaerobic digestion, pyrolysis, and vermicomposting can transform organic waste into valuable fertilizers. A study on university canteens demonstrated that treating food waste within cafeterias as independent units enabled a closed-loop system, reducing landfill burdens and returning nutrients to the soil (Zhu et al. 2025).

 

Plant waste is not waste at all. It is a resource waiting to be used.

From the stalks left in fields to the peels discarded in factories, there is a hidden world of opportunity. Scientists are finding new ways to extract value. Businesses are discovering new markets. Policymakers are creating new rules. And ordinary people like you and me can play our part.

The shift from a “throwaway” society to a circular one will not happen overnight. It requires new technologies, supportive policies, and changed mindsets. As the Ellen MacArthur Foundation puts it, a circular economy is based on three principles: eliminate waste and pollution, circulate products and materials at their highest value, and regenerate nature (Global Commitment 2025).

In nature, there is no waste. Everything is food for something else. By learning from nature, we can build an economy that works the same way, one where plant waste becomes plant treasure, and where nothing is ever truly thrown away.

The future is circular. And it starts with a simple question: What can we do with this instead of throwing it away?

 

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About the Authors

Jahed Ahmed

Jahed is a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Laboratory of Membrane Biogenesis, CNRS/University of Bordeaux and a 2026 Plantae Fellow . His research focuses on deciphering the roles of reactive oxygen species and calcium signaling in plant-virus interactions, exploring how pathogens hijack host membrane nanodomains to facilitate infection.

Kavita Joshi

Kavita is a 2026 Plantae Fellow with a background in plant biology who is passionate about plant science research, science communication, and education.She is interested in creating content for ASPB that makes plant science accessible and engaging for both the general public and the broader plant science community through simple and approachable communication. In her free time, she enjoys crafting, gardening, and exploring nature as an eco-enthusiast.