Sustainable environmental practices of tea waste—a comprehensive review

Tea, the major beverage worldwide, is one of the oldest commercial commodities traded from ancient times. Apart from many of its advantages, including health, socio-economic, climatic, and agro-ecological values, FAO has recognized that the tea value chain covering its growth in the field, processing and marketing, and finally, the hot cup at the user’s hand needs to be made sustainable during all these stages. Tea generates a lot of waste in different forms in different stages of its growth and processing, and these wastes, if not managed properly, may cause environmental pollution. A planned utilization of these wastes as feedstocks for various processes can generate more income, create rural livelihood opportunities, help grow tea environmentally sustainable, avoid GHG emissions, and make a real contribution to SDGs. Thermochemical and biological conversion of tea wastes generates value-added products. This review provides an overview on the impacts of the tea wastes on the environment, tea waste valorization processes, and applications of value-added products. The application of value-added products for energy generation, wastewater treatment, soil conditioners, adsorbents, biofertilizers, food additives, dietary supplements, animal feed bioactive chemicals, dye, colourant, and phytochemicals has been reviewed. Further, the challenges in sustainable utilization of tea wastes and opportunities for commercial exploitation of value-added products from tea wastes have been reviewed.