ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Waste Management in Agroecosystems
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1666814
This article is part of the Research TopicAddressing Microplastic Contamination: Sustainable Solutions for Resilient Food SystemsView all 5 articles
Microplastic Abundance and Characterization in the Anaerobic Co-digestion of Food Waste and Dairy Manure
Provisionally accepted
- 1Rochester Institute of Technology Thomas H Gosnell School of Life Sciences, Rochester, United States
- 2Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), Rochester, United States
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Microplastic (MP) is an emerging contaminant in organic waste recycling, yet their occurrence and fate in anaerobic digestion (AD) systems remain poorly understood due to challenges in isolating MP from complex matrices. This study developed and validated a novel extraction method using peroxide oxidation and an EDTA–Triton X-100 solution that achieved >96% recovery without polymer degradation. This method was applied to characterize MP in manure, digester effluent (digestate), and lagoon storage at a full-scale food waste–manure co-digestion facility. MP were consistently detected across all sources, with concentrations ranging from 120 MP kg⁻¹ (manure) to >3,300 MP kg⁻¹ (lagoon). Abundance was highly variable over time, shaped by feedstock composition and digester management practices. The MP observed likely stemmed from multiple pathways, including food waste inputs, packaging residues, on-farm sources, atmospheric deposition, and fragmentation of larger plastics during digestion. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fibers dominated across all samples. These findings provide the first quantitative evidence of microplastic (MP) occurrence throughout the AD process and highlight how management decisions influence contamination. By advancing extraction methods and generating new field-scale data, this study establishes a foundation for assessing the risks of MP release from AD systems to agricultural soils and downstream ecosystems.
Keywords: Microplastic, anaerobic digestion, Wasted food, Valorization, manuremanagement
Received: 16 Jul 2025; Accepted: 02 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Whitney, Chomiak, Babbitt, Eddingsaas and Tyler. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Anna Christina Tyler, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), Rochester, United States
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