Data, nature and origin of fruit and vegetable wastes

In Europe the agro industrial wastes are estimated to be as much as 250 million Tons/year. In the Mediterranean area the more abundant agro industrial wastes are related to cereals, grapes and olives transformations. This leads to a production of 2,3 million Tons from the winemaking production and 1,2 million Tons from the olive oil production and only the 25 % of these wastes is reused somehow. These wastes are renewable raw materials, a viable sources of fine chemicals to be used as such or to be transformed to synthetic products or to bio-fuels if an Integrated Use Policy is made of their special functional properties such as biocompatibility, potential biodegradability, non-toxicity and a favourable CO2 balance. Phytochemicals (i.e., folic acid, L-ascorbic acid, oligoelements, carotenoids, vitamins, sterols and phenols) represent high value compounds. Phenols from vegetables are known as biophenols which present an ubiquitous nature in terrestrial higher plants and ferns while they are essentially absent in lower organisms and in animals, on the basis the phenolic biosynthetic pathway was the major early event in the development of land plants. Biophenols as chemical defence agents of the plants show specific bioactivities and antioxidant properties to be used in several fields such as cosmetics, cosmetoceutics, nutraceutics and fine chemistry.