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Plastics are ubiquitous in many sectors including, but not limited to, construction, textiles, electronics and transportation. The immoderate use of single-use plastics has wreaked havoc on society. The intensifying environmental pollution and waste accumulation have driven the scientific communities and industries to shift their focus on biodegradable materials. An ecofriendly and sustainable economic system demands proper usage of raw materials and substitution of fossil fuel-based resources with renewable materials. Of late, bio-based constituents have attracted considerable attention from the public in view of ecological safety and economic interests. Bio-based sources are cost-effective, reusable, sustainable, clean and reduce the ecological footprint. Biopolymers can be derived from biomass (polysaccharides, proteins, lipids), bio-derived substances (polylactate) or from microorganisms (PHB, PHA, Xanthum gum). The commonly used polysaccharides include starch, cellulose, gums and chitosan. However, the hydrophilic nature of most of the polysaccharides affects the physical and mechanical properties and is not on par with the synthetic plastics that are generally used. In order to expand the applications of biodegradable polymers in various sectors, it is imperative to address the challenges associated with gas permeability, processing method, thermal stability etc. Various physical and chemical modification methods are employed to overcome these limitations. Creating awareness among the public and encouraging them to use renewable sources is important. There is a strong need to develop innovative biodegradable products and promote them by fostering collaboration among entrepreneurs, researchers and the government. This paper provides an overview of the biodegradable materials that can be produced from different sources such as vegetable and fruit waste, cereals and pulses waste, seaweeds, animal waste, wood waste, traditional sources and aims to address the current limitations and indicate the future directions.

India is an agrarian country with a long history of traditional food processing practices and Short food supply chains (SFSC). However, last few decades saw a huge investment and steady increase in large scale integrated food processing units to combat globalization, food security and India’s export demands. Recent outbreak of COVID-19 has manifested the drawbacks in the existing production and supply chain system with a wide range of issues and enforces the need for a more balanced approach. This scenario can be commonly observed in many other agrarian developing nations. This article discusses various issues concerning the existing integrated food processing sectors such as high energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and food insecurity during disasters and pandemic outbreaks. Moreover, we emphasise a more sustainable approach with a better balance and understanding between SFSC and integrated food processing. A potential solution in this scenario would be, rejuvenating SFSC and traditional food processing approaches along with integrated food processing units. An approach of this kind, opens up new possibilities for a next generation process-supply system.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 across the globe, there has been serious disruptions in food supply chains leading to poverty, hunger and food insecurity. There is also a more serious problem associated with transportation of goods across the borders due to serious lockdown imposed across the globe to combat COVID-19. There are several drawbacks in the existing food supply chains such as integrated food processing sectors and bulk production of agricultural commodities. The outbreak of COVID-19 necessitated a more balanced approach ensuring the food security of a nation during such crisis. This condition is also observed in various agrarian developing nations during COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to globalization and urbanization, short food supply chains (SFSC) and decentralized food processing (DFP) played a critical role in food supply across the globe. Till date, SFSC and DFP plays a pivotal role in combating food security and providing rural employment among people of developing countries. Integrating the advantages of SFSC in integrated food processing sectors could be a suitable solution to meet the food demands of a country during pandemic outbreak. This will also open up new opportunities for building a more resilient food supply chain for future generations. Under such conditions, there comes a need to look into more traditional and simple solutions for tackling food transportation issues. In this article, relevance of SFSC and DFP has been critically analyzed from an Indian perspective. The Indian scenario can be extrapolated for all the developing countries where the agrarian population is huge.

A novel bio-physical approach for treating well water contaminated with perchlorate (ClO4¯) at 15 mg/L is reported in this study. In this process, the ClO4¯ was initially treated in an anaerobic fixed-film bioreactor (55 L), followed by a ceramic Micro-Filtration (MF) unit (1.5 μm pore size, 0.12 m2 surface area) and a Reverse Osmosis (RO) unit (0.38 m2 surface area) connected in series. The bioreactor inoculated with a ClO4¯ reducing bacterium Serratia marcescens (Gen bank no. JQ807993) removed ~97% of the ClO4¯ using acetate as substrate (acetate/ClO4¯ ratio = 4). Subsequently, the MF and RO units removed ClO4¯ to