Circular Economy for Sustainable Disposal and Reuse of Pruning Waste for Generating New Selective Materials

Pruning waste (PW) and agricultural timber residue are barely treated, creating environmental pollution issues. A lack of regulations and environmental control criteria leads to poor ecosystems. Here we propose transforming PW from a nuisance into a valuable energy and environmental resource. Reuse and recycling options include turning the waste into a food source, or using it to generate energy, compost, soil fertilizer amendment and other products. A linear programming model with Boolean variables and a management model were defined and run for the reuse of PW. The management model defined the diverse options of PW reuse for resource recovery. These options depend to a considerable extent on the country’s production capacity and the preferred applied alternatives. The area of Israel was split into separate regions, which were classified according to preferred alternatives for PW treatment and reuse. These alternatives included factors such as annual amounts of trash generated, transportation expense, energy demand, and requirements based on annual and daily needs. An optimization model was defined and solved, subject to a series of constraints. The results showed that a net profit of approximately 3.5 million USD/year for a total community of close to 10x106 residents could be derived from the amounts of waste and improved environmental control, in addition to the additional energy source. This work raises the urgent need to regulate the recycling policies for PW in various environmental regions worldwide.