**2. Nature and generation of horticultural waste**

The affluence of horticulture in industrial and environmental perspective is greatly significant today. Whereas there are some phenomena arising day by day with management and utilization of horticultural wastes. The nature of wastes in horticultural end is multidisciplinary. Some create chemical hazard; some are alarming for their biological and thermal point of view also. Postharvest handling and storage occur about 54% of wastes that is upstream, while 46% happens "downstream," at the processing, distribution, and consumption stages [9]. These wastes disposal is our major concern in case of sustainable waste management.

#### **2.1. Wastes evolving during horticultural production chain**

The pragmatic scenario of waste evolving is associated with the increasing of population. With higher population, increasing rate demands the higher agricultural produce. In other words, more food demand may arise with the population increasing rate.

Agricultural production nowadays is more than three times than the last five decades [10]. With technological advancement, the productivity may increase in horticultural sectors also. On the contrary with the increasing productivity, it generates the higher quantities of wastes also. Some of them are green wastes, and some are recyclable solid wastes.

*Sustainable Horticultural Waste Management: Industrial and Environmental Perspective DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101689*

#### *2.1.1. Farming activity in horticultural production system*

Mainly this sector may generate waste most in quantities. The whole process demands lots of intercultural operations such as training, pruning, thinning, earthing up, etc., of various fruits and vegetables can provide some wastes. For example, leaf residues, debris, dead leaves. However, these wastes sometimes added the additional organic matter in the soil. But if the maintenance is not sound enough in horticultural production chain, then the waste becomes burden for the environment. If we enlighten on the data (**Table 1**) given by Gmada et al. in 2019, according to their own supervision in the farm of Almeria, there are high amount of wastes distribution in various horticultural production systems. Greenhouses have the higher wastes in 39,215 ton out of 90,738 tons of total wastes, which is 43% of the total waste. Another approach of waste getting is disinfection having the second highest waste getting percentage that is 23%. So, there are different steps and period of waste getting and without waste management of horticultural products we the environment will be depleted day by day at the negative manner.

#### *2.1.2. Chemical wastes during cultivation*

These wastes are generated from the continuous use of pesticides, insecticides, and herbicides during the cultivation. These are mainly solid wastes such as pesticides containers, bottles. The activities of using these types of chemicals in developing countries are mostly handled by the rural uneducated farmers. So, the disposal of these types of solid wastes usually gets ignorance by the farmers or the users. Such types of ignorance result in the degraded mode of the environmental balance. About 2% of pesticides usually remain unused in the containers, and then the disposal of these hazardous material is done by the throwing these into the nearest ponds or on the open field condition; the ultimate environmental issues may arise by this as food poisoning, water pollution, air pollution, etc., by this type of ignorance [12].


#### **Table 1.**

*Annual distribution of waste according to their function of Almeria [11].*

#### *2.1.3. Postharvest wastes*

Postharvest food loss is any loss in physical weight, edibility, nutritional quality, caloric value, consumer adequacy happens between the period of reap and the time it reaches the consumer, while food waste is a subset of the food losses [13], and this might occur through human activity or inaction such as discarding produce, not consuming accessible food before its expiry date, or taking serving sizes beyond one's ability to consume [14]. Horticultural crops are highly perishable products. As it is perishable so that handling and the maintenance are really tough. For this kind of phenomena, the developing countries are the real sufferers of this type of problems. Postharvest loss and wastes of perishable commodities in horticulture are up to 60% depending on the seasons, commodity, and the region of production [15]. So, the wastes after harvesting threaten the sustainable environmental security with environmental pollution. Postharvest loss is not the issue of reduction of food availability for the consumers; it may cause negative externalities to the societies with the increasing cost effect of waste management, greenhouse gas production, and loss of scarce resources used in production [16].

### *2.1.4. Unconsumed waste foods and kitchen waste*

One part of the world's population is struggling every day with the hunger and scarcity of food, whereas in some parts of the world, people waste food without thinking about the food security. Horticultural foods such as vegetables, fruits, and grain crops are wasted daily in our home and appear as the kitchen wastes. In


#### **Table 2.**

*Bioactive compounds identified in different fruits and vegetables [19, 20].*

*Sustainable Horticultural Waste Management: Industrial and Environmental Perspective DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101689*

America, horticultural wastages consist of fruits nearly 20%, vegetables 30%, others 25% [17]. General estimation of food waste annually is about trillion US dollars [18]. The whole world scenario is also alarming in this concern.
