Rebound effects could offset more than half of avoided food loss and waste

Margaret  Hegwood; Matthew G.  Burgess; Erin M.  Costigliolo; Pete Smith; Bojana Bajželj; Harry  Saunders; Steven J. Davis

doi:10.1038/s43016-023-00792-z

Rebound effects could offset more than half of avoided food loss and waste

Margaret Hegwood^* (Corresponding Author)
, Matthew G. Burgess^* (Corresponding Author)
, Erin M. Costigliolo
, Pete Smith
, Bojana Bajželj
, Harry Saunders
, Steven J. Davis^* (Corresponding Author)

^*Corresponding author for this work

Aberdeen Centre For Environmental Sustainability

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

27 Citations (Scopus)

4 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Reducing food loss and waste (FLW) could lessen the environmental impacts of food systems and improve food security. However, rebound effects—whereby efficiency improvements cause price decreases and consumption increases—may offset some avoided FLW. Here we model rebounds in food consumption under a scenario of costless FLW reduction. We project that consumption rebound could offset 53–71% of avoided FLW. Such rebounds would imply similar percentage reductions in environmental benefits (carbon emissions, land use, water use) and improvements in food security benefits (increased calorie availability), highlighting a tension between these two objectives. Evidence from energy systems suggests that indirect effects not included in our analysis could further increase rebounds. However, costs of reducing FLW would reduce rebounds. Rebound effects are therefore important to consider in efforts aimed at reducing FLW.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	585-595
Number of pages	11
Journal	Nature Food
Volume	4
Issue number	7
Early online date	20 Jul 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-023-00792-z
Publication status	Published - 20 Jul 2023

Bibliographical note

Acknowledgements We thank Peter Newton, Sebastian Dueñas-Ocampo, Rayna Benzeev, Lee Frankel-Goldwater, Waverly Eichhorst, Ryan Langendorf, and Hilary Brumberg for their feedback on earlier drafts of this document; and Ryan Langendorf for helpful feedback and discussion on the economic analysis. M.H. and M.G.B. acknowledge funding from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) (Award number: 2020-38420-30727), and the University of Colorado Boulder Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) (start-up grant to M.G.B.). S.J.D. was supported by the US National Science Foundation and US Department of Agriculture (INFEWS grant EAR 1639318) and by the ClimateWorks Foundation (grant 22-2100). .

Data Availability Statement

We used public data from FAOSTAT (https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/), the United Nations Environment Program Food Waste Index Report database (https://www.unep.org/resources/report/unep-food-waste-index-report-2021) and the 2019 State of Food and Agriculture Report (https://www.fao.org/documents/card/en?details=ca6030en). We also used data from relevant literature as cited in our study54,55. All data used in this study are included as supplementary information and are also publicly available at https://github.com/mhegwood/foodwaste. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability
Data analysis was conducted in MATLAB (version 9.11.0.1809720 (R2021b) Update 1) and Mathematica (version 11.3). The code used in this study is included as supplementary information and is also publicly available at https://github.com/mhegwood/foodwaste.

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 2 Zero Hunger
SDG 15 Life on Land

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Cite this

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abstract = "Reducing food loss and waste (FLW) could lessen the environmental impacts of food systems and improve food security. However, rebound effects—whereby efficiency improvements cause price decreases and consumption increases—may offset some avoided FLW. Here we model rebounds in food consumption under a scenario of costless FLW reduction. We project that consumption rebound could offset 53–71\% of avoided FLW. Such rebounds would imply similar percentage reductions in environmental benefits (carbon emissions, land use, water use) and improvements in food security benefits (increased calorie availability), highlighting a tension between these two objectives. Evidence from energy systems suggests that indirect effects not included in our analysis could further increase rebounds. However, costs of reducing FLW would reduce rebounds. Rebound effects are therefore important to consider in efforts aimed at reducing FLW.",

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Rebound effects could offset more than half of avoided food loss and waste

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Data Availability Statement

UN SDGs

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