SmartBreed

Industrial insect rearing as a decentralized, circular economy food waste recovery strategy

SmartBreed has developed a decentralised, circular economy insect breeding system which up-cycles food waste at food production companies. It turns insect larvae into fertiliser, protein-rich insect meal for animal feed and insect oil (biodiesel) in an industrial symbiosis. The FHNW School of Life Sciences is running two analyses as part of the life cycle assessment. The aim is to see whether giving food by-products to insects directly where the by-products originate, and extracting raw materials from them, is better ecologically than conventional methods such as using them in a biogas plant or as animal feed.