Waste stream valorization in cultured meat manufacturing: Pathways toward circularity and sustainability

As the demand for sustainable food increases, cultured meat (CM) emerges as a promising alternative to conventional livestock farming. Despite its potential environmental benefits, CM production requires substantial inputs, including energy, culture media, and water, which generate diverse waste streams, ranging from spent culture media and biomass residues to plastic and other material wastes. This represents an opportunity for waste stream valorization (WSV), thereby influencing the scalability, environmental footprint, and economic feasibility of cultured meat production. Consequently, an industrial-scale WSV framework was developed, focusing on comprehensive waste stream management that encompasses media recycling, energy recovery, and the integration of waste treatment approaches and novel recycling systems. The developed framework represents a key step toward establishing cultured meat processes that are scalable, environmentally sustainable, and economically viable by integrating downstream and waste stream considerations into upstream process design. Next to the WSV framework, the reference scenario introduces a quantification of the waste streams of an exemplary 200 m³ cultivation facility, including, for example, that spent culture media may exceed 5000 m³ annually for such a CM production plant. Ultimately, WSV is expected to play an important role in aligning CM manufacturing with circular economy principles, although its implementation and impact need to be further investigated.