Recycling phosphorus from waste in China: Recycling methods and their environmental and resource consequences

Recycling phosphorus (P) from waste is an effective way to alleviate resource and environmental pollution due to excessive phosphate consumption. In order to better understand the feedback of P cycle to waste recycling methods, a P waste feedback model was built and was then used to predict P waste generation, recycling, loss and phosphate consumption in China under several P management scenarios. Three recycling methods, ‘waste as fertilizer’, ‘waste as feed’ and ‘waste as industrial material’, were analyzed for each scenario. The results show that people choosing a more balanced diet will largely increase P loss and phosphate consumption. The integration of all P sustainable measures can offset these increase and P loss and phosphate consumption will be 50% and 62% lower than 2015, respectively. ‘Waste as fertilizer’ decreases per capita phosphate consumption from 10 kg P y−1 to 2.6 kg P y−1, and ‘waste as feed’ decreases per capita P loss from 6.2 kg P y−1 to 2.2 kg P y−1. ‘Waste as material’ method is less effective among the three methods. Integrated measure with ‘waste as fertilizer’ method minimizes the pressure of P reserve depletion, but the economically recoverable reserve would still be depleted around 2053.