Tea byproducts biorefinery for bioenergy recovery and value-added products development: A step towards environmental sustainability

In many industrialized and developing countries, the copious amount of solid waste and byproducts produced by tea processing and production enterprises today pose a distressing and pervasive problem. Consequently, finding a sustainable way to repurpose tea waste (TW) in various applications has become the primary focus of the global research community. The current study highlights the advantageous use of TW biomass in agricultural compost and other uses, as well as the sustainable reutilization of tea industry waste. Additionally, to gain a better understanding of their potential application in environmental fields, this paper also aims to draw attention to recent solid-state fermentation applications in the feed industry, as well as highlight valorization technologies and their effectiveness in converting TW using important thermo-chemical processes, such as pyrolysis, hydrothermal carbonization, gasification, and combustion. In order to increase the competitiveness and societal acceptance of biorefineries, the present paper also examines the latest developments in environmental biotechnology. However, these biomaterials hold great promise for use in developing nanoparticles and composite biomaterials. The conclusions of this review study are crucial for the environment friendly and sustainable growth of the world. This review envisions resource management in the context of a circular bioeconomy and zero waste.