The rebound effect is often overlooked in life cycle assessments

On 20 October 2026, the WASTEWISE partner Niina Sundin (SLU) participated in the SETAC Europe 27th LCA Symposium, held in Bruges, Belgium. As part of the session titled “Quanitifying what we avoid: LCA for evaluating waste prevention and reuse”, she presented the results of the recent study conducted on the effect of the rebound effect in the life cycle assessment of food waste interventions.

Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) routinely credit food waste prevention with avoided production, but they rarely account for household economic behaviour. The study of two Swedish surplus food redistribution models (food donations and social supermarkets) revealed that re-spending of household monetary savings can offset 50% to 90% of expected climate gains. Though interventions remain net-beneficial overall, these findings demonstrate that gross estimates often significantly overstate true environmental outcomes.