Utilization of pea industry waste for developing biodegradable product

Abstract

With the development of agro-based industry in India, the production of wastes from these industries increased rapidly by quantity as well as by variety. These industries produce large volume of waste, resulting from the production, preparation and consumption of food. Pea processing industry involves preserving green peas by freezing and marketing them for seasonal limitation and producing a very high amount of waste as a by-product. Inappropriate disposal of this waste not only results in environmental degradation and pollution, but also loss of valuable biomass resources. The present study was aimed to estimate the nutritional value of waste pea peels and to utilize them for developing bio-degradable product through value addition in an efficient way. The result revealed that waste pea peels have high nutritive value of crude protein (19.79%), and have a good amount of ash (7.87%), fat (2.27%) and fiber (1.84%). The biofilm developed under this study has good tensile strength (5.96 MPa), thickness (70 μm) and water solubility (2.46%). Therefore bio-film can be a substitute of synthetic plastic with the advantage of employment generation, energy recovery and livelihood security which would ultimately lead to sustainable development.