Stevens Institute of Technology , Hoboken 07030 , New Jersey , United States.
Washington State University , Pullman , Washington 99164-6610 , United States.
Environ Sci Technol. 2019 Sep 3;53(17):10417-10425. doi: 10.1021/acs.est.9b02464. Epub 2019 Aug 21.
Phosphorus is required as a fertilizer for producing food, and there is no substitute. Losses between mine production and diet result in significant environmental harm. We used a demand-driven substance flow model to explore the sensitivity of global phosphorus production to interventions of the food system including: reduction in animal fraction in the diet (AFD); manure use efficiency (MUE); animal food yield (YA); phosphorus use efficiency (PUE); the fraction of food that is wasted (FWF); the fraction of food waste recycled (FRE); and the fraction of human waste recycled (WRE). The model indicated that AFD and YA are the most influential interventions, and they interact with PUE and MUE. Furthermore, there is a minimum in AFD and YA below which it becomes necessary to increase mining. Another result is that reducing food waste is about 80 times more effective than recycling food waste in reducing P demand. Finally, the model was used to explore the global carrying capacity for humans on the basis of P sources other than mining. These sources may satisfy P requirements for as many as 2.5 billion people. If significant improvements were made in all of the considered interventions simultaneously, as many as 14.7 billion people could be sustained.
磷是生产食物所必需的肥料，没有替代品。从矿山生产到饮食之间的损失会对环境造成严重危害。我们使用需求驱动的物质流模型来探讨全球磷生产对食品系统干预的敏感性，包括：饮食中动物部分的减少（AFD）；肥料利用效率（MUE）；动物食品产量（YA）；磷利用效率（PUE）；食物浪费的比例（FWF）；食物浪费回收的比例（FRE）；人类废物回收的比例（WRE）。该模型表明，AFD 和 YA 是最具影响力的干预措施，它们与 PUE 和 MUE 相互作用。此外，AFD 和 YA 低于某个值，就有必要增加采矿。另一个结果是，减少食物浪费在减少磷需求方面比回收食物浪费有效 80 倍。最后，该模型用于探索基于除采矿以外的其他磷源的全球人类承载能力。这些来源可能满足多达 25 亿人的磷需求。如果同时显著改进所有考虑到的干预措施，多达 147 亿人可以得到维持。
