Utilization of cereal-based husks to achieve sustainable development goals: Treatment of wastewater, biofuels, and biodegradable packaging

Background: Food waste management (FWM) has gained much attention over the past few years in industries, research institutions, and national and international organizations due to its significant potential to produce valuable products and control environmental pollution. Finding the sustainable approaches to utilize these waste materials is a current focus of many researchers.Scope and approach: This review aims to explore the potential of cereal-based husks from 5 major cereal grains (wheat, rice, corn, barley, and millet) to achieve goals 6 (clean water and sanitation), 7 (affordable and clean energy), 9 (industry, innovation, and infrastructure), and 12 (responsible consumption and production) of the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) set out by the united nations to make the world more healthy and developed with minimum environmental pollution.Key findings and conclusion: Cereal-based husks can be utilized to make adsorbents to remove heavy metals, dyes, antibiotics, pesticides, and petrol contaminants from wastewater. These husks can be utilized to produce clean and affordable energy alternatives such as biogas (methane), organic bio-oil, biodiesel, and bioethanol. More-over, the biopolymeric matrices of these husks can be efficiently used to make bioplastics, biocomposite films, biodegradable foams, and packaging paper for food and other industries.