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Featured Article
The Impact of COVID-19 on Consumer Food
Waste
Brian E. Roe*, Kathryn Bender, and Danyi Qi
Brian E. Roe is Van Buren Professor in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental,
and Development Economics at Ohio State University. Kathryn Bender is an Assistant
Professor in the Department of Economics at Allegheny College. Danyi Qi is an
Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness at
Louisiana State University.
Editor in charge: Craig Gundersen
*Correspondence may be sent to: E-mail: roe.30@osu.edu
Submitted 15 July 2020; editorial decision 12 August 2020.
Abstract Perhaps no phenomenon has so quickly and radically altered household
production parameters and daily food patterns as the onset of the COVID-19 pan-
demic. We contemplate the immediate and longer-term implications of this public
health crisis on the amount of food wasted by consumers. We conclude that the pan-
demic and its aftermath may improve household skills and management practices in a
manner that reduces day-to-day household food waste. However, pandemic-driven
disruptions may induce larger intermittent purges of food due to changes in work pat-
terns and food service and food retailing availability. We recommend several steps to
reduce waste as the pandemic unfolds.
Key words: Consumers, COVID-19, Food waste, Household.
JEL codes: D1, Q1.
Introduction
Perhaps no phenomenon has so quickly and radically altered household
production parameters and daily food patterns in the United States as the
onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Soon after the national emergency declara-
tion, key inputs into household production shifted massively, with the
amount of time spent outside the home declining by more than 20%, con-
sumer spending declining by more than 30%, and employment rates and
earnings among low-income Americans declining by more than 35% (Chetty
et al. 2020).
Food acquisition patterns were also fundamentally shifted compared to
pre-COVID levels (Restrepo, Rabbit, and Gregory 2020). Consumer spending
at restaurants and hotels declined by more than 60% with the onset of
COVID-19 (Chetty et al. 2020). Grocery spending spiked at a 70% increase
during mid-March compared to pre-COVID levels and has featured a
© 2020 Agricultural & Applied Economics Association
Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy (2021) volume 43, number 1, pp. 401–411.
doi:10.1002/aepp.13079
401
sustained increase of around 10% through April, May, and June of 2020
(Chetty et al. 2020). In early April of 2020, 50% of consumers reported shop-
ping less in person than compared with the pre-COVID period, with 37% pur-
chasing more at each visit, 16% reporting initiation of grocery delivery
services, and 13% reporting an increase in the frequency of grocery deliveries
(IFIC 2020a).
The content of purchases also changed after COVID-19, with consumers
reporting increases in purchases of pantry items (37% reported an increase),
frozen items (31%), and packaged foods (22%), and decreases in purchases
of fresh produce items (15%) (IFIC 2020a). Remarkably, only 11% of con-
sumers reported no changes in shopping habits during early April of 2020,
and only 19% reported no changes in eating habits (IFIC 2020a), suggesting
few American households were untouched by the turbulence of the
COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, many households have struggled to maintain
food security since the onset of the pandemic (Ahn and Norwood 2020; Gun-
dersen et al. 2020; Ziliak 2020).
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has drawn considerable attention to
food movement through key harvest, processing and distribution pinch
points, with news coverage capturing graphic incidents of upstream food
waste (e.g., piglet euthanasia, farm-level milk dumping, food service distribu-
tion channel waste; see Yaffe-Bellany and Corkery 2020). However, we must
remember that consumers are the final and arguably most critical link in the
food supply chain, as consumption of food is the raison d’etre for the entire
food supply chain. Indeed, all effort expended to reduce upstream food sup-
ply chain waste is rendered a costly folly should the consumer then waste the
food.
1
By some estimates, this is considerable: e.g., 83% of food waste occurs at
consumer-facing businesses (40%) and in homes (43%) according to
ReFED (2016). Further, in the aggregate, this waste can create system-wide
spillovers through increased prices, decreased availability of food, and
increased environmental and resource pressures, all of which creates particu-
larly harsh burdens for lower-income consumers.
In this article, we explore how the COVID-19 pandemic may affect con-
sumer food waste in developed economies such as the United States. While
not deriving an explicit model, we draw upon concepts from the household
production literature and note that several authors have used such a frame-
work to derive implications of various household production parameters
for the generation of food waste (Katare et al. 2017; Lusk and Ellison 2017;
Qi 2018; Hamilton and Richards 2019; Ellison et al. 2020). Comparative statics
from these efforts suggest food waste may decline under circumstances stim-
ulated by the pandemic: more time available for household production; accu-
mulated experience and knowledge with home food provisioning and meal
preparation; less income available to purchase meal inputs; and higher prices
for food. However, comparative statics are insufficient to provide the entire
picture, as such analyses ignore key transitional aspects of behavior that arise
from rapid shocks such as those experienced during this pandemic.
We organize our article around changes in stylized facts caused by the pan-
demic that will perturb household production parameters and then conjec-
ture how this will alter the amount of food waste created by consumers
1
See, for example, Gillman, Campbell, and Spang (2019), who calculate that the accumulated life cycle
impact from wasting food at the final consumer level is so great that, for some crops, welfare is improved
by allowing excess food to spoil in the field rather than enter the supply chain.
Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy
402
both in the short and long run, with citations of supporting research and data
if they exist. We end with some overall predictions about the net effect that the
COVID-19 pandemic will have on consumer food waste and recommenda-
tions on short-term steps that could help reduce waste due to the pandemic.
Postpandemic Changes
Shifts in Home Food Provisioning
An initial and highly visible impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was that of
empty grocery store shelves. While the supply chains supporting many food
products endured great stress due to multiple disrupting forces (Hobbs 2020;
Richards and Rickard 2020), the store shelves for many food items were
empty or featured limited selection, in part due to panic buying in which fears
of food shortages at an individual level led to a self-fulfilling prophecy on
aggregate (Kuruppu and De Zoysa 2020). In April of 2020, WRAP (2020)
reported 37% of UK adults were concerned about supermarkets running
out of food during the coronavirus situation, while IFIC reported 28% of US
consumers were concerned about stores running out of staple items
(IFIC 2020a). Even in July of 2020, our own (along with several other col-
leagues) survey work with more than 500 respondents from throughout the
United States suggests about 25% of US consumers feared certain items
would be in short supply at grocery stores (Bender et al. 2020). Such relatively
high levels of concern, though slightly lower than the ones reported in April,
may be associated with several regional spikes of confirmed COVID-19 cases
in July when consumers were relatively more experienced in post-COVID
food sourcing compared to immediately after the onset of the pandemic in
March.
A fundamental and unanswered question is whether panic-purchased
foods will be wasted at greater rates than normally acquired foods. Our intu-
ition is that this is likely. Panic purchases were in larger quantities (Chetty
et al. (2020) note a 78% increase in grocery expenditures in mid-March
2020), which may lead to suboptimal storage, particularly for perishables
(though we note that in April 2020, 15% of consumers reported purchasing
less fresh produce according to IFIC (2020a)). However, even for nonperish-
able items, Wansink, Brasel, and Amjad (2000) document frequent “cabinet
castaways,”i.e., shelf-stable items that were never used for their intended
purpose and persisted in home storage until discovered and discarded.
Panic-purchased foods may also have been items that were not of the pre-
ferred size, formulation, or brand, and hence require the consumer to be flex-
ible or creative during preparation and consumption, all of which may
increase the likelihood of waste.
While panic purchasing has largely passed, other grocery purchasing pat-
terns persist, with mixed implications for likely waste. IFIC (2020a) found that
in April 2020, 50% of consumers reported shopping less in person and 37% of
consumers reported buying more groceries each time they went shopping.
IFIC (2020b) noted that 36% of consumers in May 2020 reported an increase
in purchases of packaged foods. Larger, less frequent food shopping is likely
to exacerbate waste, all else equal, as this requires better meal planning and
storage practices to ensure less waste. For example, Lee (2018) found that
per capita food waste was greater among South Korean consumers who
shopped less frequently. However, increased reliance on packaged foods
may reduce waste as these goods can be stored for longer periods
Impact of COVID-19
403
(nonperishables) or used with little preparation effort (perishables), both of
which should decrease the risk of waste.
Online grocery shopping has also increased with 16% of consumers in the
IFIC (2020a) study reporting the initiation of grocery delivery after COVID-
19. Again, we see mixed implications for consumer food waste. Online shop-
ping can largely reduce the perceived cost of taking a trip into the grocery
store where social distance is more difficult to maintain. With fewer perceived
costs of shopping, online grocery shopping may limit panic shopping and
mitigate the necessity of food stockpiling, though many online grocery
attempts immediately after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic went unful-
filled due to service providers who were unable to adjust capacity to the spike
in demand (Zumbach 2020). Online food ordering may also temper impulse
purchases of food (Jilcott Pitts et al. 2018) that may seem desirable in the store
but not find a use and be wasted once at home. Further, online interfaces may
limit acquisition of perishable produce due to consumer hesitancy concerning
quality as they no longer can choose individual produce items (Jilcott Pitts
et al. 2018). On the other hand, increased reliance upon online shopping can
increase a consumer’s“psychological distance”to food, which has been
shown to increase the tendency to waste food (Ilyuk 2018). That is, when con-
sumers have less attachment to the food (i.e., do not physically connect to
items by actively choosing the item and placing it in an actual cart), it may
become easier for them to waste those items.
The onset of COVID-19 in the United States also corresponded with many
local growing seasons. This timing, along with consumer concern about the
safety and reliability of the food supply chain, resulted in increased interest
in homegrown and locally grown foods (Shilton 2020; Walljasper and Polan-
sek 2020). In our July 2020 study of US consumers, about 30% indicated at
least a portion of their food was homegrown or obtained locally from either
a farmer’s market or community-supported agriculture (Bender et al. 2020).
However, the implications for waste are again mixed. Growing your own
food or acquiring it via direct marketing channels suggests more involvement
with the food, which reduces psychological distance and could reduce the
amount wasted. However, perishable produce, particularly when received
in bulk, may be at risk for waste. Respondents to an April 2020 study of
households in the US and China reported fruits and vegetables as the most
common foods thrown away during the pandemic (Dou et al. 2020). This is
unsurprising given the perishable nature of fruits and vegetables combined
with the reported decrease in frequency of food shopping trips.
In response to simultaneous supply chain disruptions (Hobbs 2020) and an
increase in household food insecurity spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic
(Ahn and Norwood 2020; Gundersen et al. 2020; Ziliak 2020), the US Depart-
ment of Agriculture (USDA) introduced the Farmers to Families Food Box
program that distributed more than 32 million food boxes during May and
June of 2020, with additional distributions planned for the summer of 2020
(USDA 2020). Boxes contain an assortment of produce, dairy, and/or meat
chosen by participating vendors and delivered to interested consumers
through familiar touchpoints in the emergency food system (food banks, food
pantries, churches, and other nonprofits). The launch of this program likely
reduced waste at the farm and distributor levels, as the reduction in demand
from food service channels yielded surpluses that may have otherwise
resulted in items being discarded or used for purposes other than human
nutrition (Yaffe-Bellany and Corkery 2020).
Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy
404
However, distribution of boxes where the assortment of foods is selected by
the vendor rather than by the patron may increase waste compared to emer-
gency food outlets that permit patrons to select their own combination of
items. For example, Pruden et al. (2020) note that emergency food clients
who receive fixed bundles of food (i.e., bundles chosen by the local agency)
report using 12 percentage points less of the distributed food than clients
who were permitted autonomy of food choice. Hence, actions by USDA and
participating emergency food providers that increase the variety or customiz-
ability of these boxes to meet patron preferences may ensure fewer items are
wasted in patron homes.
Other temporary measures are being taken to reduce barriers for direct-to-
consumer sales and donations during COVID-induced supply chain disrup-
tions. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) relaxed regulations
around package labeling so that foods intended for preparation in restaurants
and by food manufacturers can be sold directly to consumers instead. These
packages are often larger and may lack consumer-facing labels such as nutri-
tion labels and handling instructions. The FDA is temporarily allowing these
unlabeled packages to be sold so long as the information is displayed at the
point of purchase (FDA 2020). As with the Farmers to Families Food Box pro-
gram, these measures will likely reduce upstream waste but could increase
consumer waste. Previous research has shown that package size, ease of
use, and date labeling all contribute to consumer food waste (Williams
et al. 2012; Roe et al. 2018a; Roe et al. 2018b). While a lack of date labels could
reduce waste (Roe et al. 2018a), larger and bulkier packages will likely lead to
a net increase in consumer waste (Williams et al. 2012).
Shifts to at-Home Meal Preparation
As the COVID-19 pandemic spread and stay-at-home orders went into
effect across the United States, consumer behavior changed drastically. One
well-documented behavior change is the shift to at-home meal preparation
and consumption, with 60% of consumers reporting cooking at home more
as a result of COVID-19 (IFIC 2020c). Prior research has shown minimal plate
waste when people prepare meals at home compared to meals provided in a
food service setting (Roe et al. 2018b), suggesting that a greater reliance on
home-prepared meals can reduce food waste created at the end of meals.
However, plate waste is only one source of food waste in homes and food
service. Ongoing research by two of the authors finds that plate waste consti-
tutes less than 40% of all waste created by a sample of US households on a
daily basis, with the remaining waste created during food preparation (e.g.,
trimming and tossing broccoli stalks) and food cleanout settings (e.g., tossing
out uneaten leftovers from the refrigerator), which is similar to figures docu-
mented by Quested and Murphy (2014) in the UK. We are unaware of any
published research in food service settings that documents the amount of
plate waste (i.e., front-of-house waste) relative to preparation and storage
waste (i.e., back-of-house waste) in the same study. For one food service set-
ting—K-12 cafeterias—when we compare across disparate studies, it appears
that plate waste exceeds back-of-house waste on a per-meal basis. Specifi-
cally, Prescott et al. (2019) measure about 44 g of back-of-house food waste
for each meal produced in several Colorado K-12 cafeterias while Bergman
et al. (2004) find plate waste of 157 to 223 g/meal (Bergman et al. 2004) and
Adams et al. (2005) find produce waste alone of 46 to 81 g/meal.
Impact of COVID-19
405
Though no similar data exists in other food service settings to document the
relative waste between front-of-house and back-of-house sources, we note
that, compared to home-prepared meals, restaurants and food service entities
likely waste less food than home cooks during preparation as many food ser-
vice ingredients are packaged to minimize waste (e.g., pre-portioned items in
quick service restaurant formats) or prepared by skilled professionals under
an explicit cost-minimizing objective that seeks to maximize back-of-house
efficiency (e.g., reducing waste by careful preparation, meal planning, and
storage practices in full-service restaurant settings).
Hence, we predict that shifting to more meals prepared at home in place of
meals from food service is likely to create less plate waste but more waste dur-
ing preparation and food management. The net effect of this shift on overall
food waste is unknown, but in the short run (e.g., March and April of 2020),
a net increase in waste was likely as consumers refined their home food man-
agement and cooking skills –a topic we touch on in the section on dynamic
implications of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dynamic and Longer Run Considerations
While the changes spurred by the onset of COVID-19 occurred quickly,
some effects may be long-lasting through dynamics that unfold over the
months and years to follow. One change that has been hypothesized is that
of consumer home production capability with respect to food. That is, with
the additional reliance on home-prepared meals and, for some, additional
in-home time due to fewer work and commuting hours, consumers may have
increased their effectiveness as a home chef and meal planner, which could
yield longer term reductions in waste (WRAP 2007; Graham-Rowe, Jessop,
and Sparks 2014).
For example, in April of 2020, WRAP (2020) found that the average UK con-
sumer reported undertaking six new food management behaviors that sup-
port reductions in food waste (e.g., pre-shop planning) more often since the
onset of COVID-19 lockdowns, while nearly 80% reported undertaking at
least one of those behaviors more often. The authors found that at least a third
of respondents to a July 2020 survey assess that their cooking skills have
improved during the three-plus months since the onset of COVID-19 while
even more report an improvement in their own food management skills
(Bender et al. 2020).
These may be home production skills that persist and yield long-term
reductions in waste, though skills learned may also be forgotten (Ben-
kard 2000), particularly in areas where restaurant and food service facilities
resumed operations rapidly after initial lockdowns. The likelihood of long-
term adoption of food management practices and in-home cooking may, in
fact, depend on the course of the pandemic itself; the longer stay-at-home
orders are in place, or the more frequently they are reinstated over the next
months and years, the more likely long-term adoption of these new habits will
occur.
Another feature of the lockdown was a shift in household size and compo-
sition, with about one-fifth of Americans having relocated or knowing some-
one who has relocated due to COVID-19, often creating larger households in
the process (Cohn 2020). This includes about 10% of adults between eighteen
and twenty-nine years of age changing residences as a result of the pandemic,
with many of them returning to homes of parents and relatives (Cohn 2020).
Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy
406
Most analyses of household food waste suggest that per-capita waste is lower
in larger households as there are simply more people and hence opportunities
for acquired food to be used for nutrition prior to quality decay and because
package sizes often favor medium to large households over single-person
households (Hebrok and Boks 2017; Schanes, Dobernig and Gozet Schanes,
Dobernig, and Gözet 2018; Thyberg and Tonjes 2016).
While this may hold across established households, to our best knowledge
the effect of transitions in household size on food waste are not documented.
We predict that transitions, for example, where students prematurely
returned home from college, may temporarily increase food waste, as items
may have been left to decay at the students’school residences, while provi-
sioning in the absorbing household may have taken several weeks to adjust
appropriately with a greater chance of waste from overprovisioning or acqui-
sition of items not favored by new and returning household members.
Just as household membership may have shifted during lockdown, so too
may have household food storage capacity. We found in July 2020 that more
than a quarter of respondents had increased refrigerated storage capacity and
more than 10% had increased frozen storage capacity since the onset of the
COVID-19 pandemic (Bender et al. 2020). These are durable investments that
will likely increase long-term storage of refrigerated and frozen items. Indeed,
in the same July 2020 survey, more than 40% of respondents reported an
increased amount of refrigerated or frozen food in storage due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, with more than a quarter reporting increases in both
refrigerated and frozen food.
If consumers continue to waste refrigerated and frozen items at the same
(pre-COVID) rate, then a higher carrying capacity will mean higher total
waste. Put another way, consumers will have to enact improvements in their
refrigerated and frozen storage efficiency to ensure total waste from refriger-
ated and frozen sources does not increase. Larger refrigerators and freezers
can mean more territory in which items can become lost, though increased
freezer capacity in particular can reduce waste if used properly.
Conclusions
Some of the household changes precipitated by the onset of the COVID-19
pandemic hold the potential to enhance the efficiency of the household food
production process and reduce the overall amount of food wasted by con-
sumers. For example, with more time available as hours worked and com-
muting time have decreased, many US consumers report an improvement
in their cooking and food management skills (Bender et al. 2020). Decreasing
employment and earnings, along with higher food prices, can heighten the
incentive for tighter home management, which may include less food waste,
outcomes consistent with comparative statics from household production
models of food waste (Katare et al. 2017; Lusk and Ellison 2017; Qi 2018; Ham-
ilton and Richards 2019; Ellison et al. 2020). In fact, a past review of the liter-
ature concludes that employment is generally correlated with higher levels of
consumer food waste than unemployment (Schanes, Dobernig, and
Gözet 2018).
Indeed, when WRAP (2020) surveyed consumers from around the UK in
April of 2020 using food-waste tracking questions consistently administered
over the past several years, respondents reported the waste rate for key items
Impact of COVID-19
407
such as bread, milk, chicken, and potatoes declined to 14% from a November
2019 high of 24%. Respondents were also asked if they were discarding more
or less food than usual in the past month, and 36% said less than usual, with
only 4% reporting more than usual. These findings are consistent with empir-
ical work conducted by Landry and Smith (2019) using data from the late
1970s in the United States. They identified food waste as a luxury output of
the household production process that was elastic to the price of food; hence
the higher food prices and diminished incomes prevalent in the post-COVID
United States should translate to less food waste.
While COVID-19 may provide a silver lining in terms of the everyday cre-
ation of food waste, the figures from the UK and the 1970’s data used in
Landry and Smith likely miss intermittent food purges, which Parizeau,
von Massow, and Martin (2015) note represent large and critical elements of
overall food waste figures. Also, it is unclear if the trends documented in
the UK and in 1970s US homes translate to the modern US household
experience.
While a survey similar to the WRAP (2020) study has not been conducted in
the United States, the IFIC (2020a) study, which was also conducted in April
2020, reveals some differences between US and UK food purchasing habits,
which may challenge simple translation of UK trends to the United States.
For example, in the United States frozen food purchases increased by 31%
while 15% reported purchasing fewer fresh fruits and vegetables. In the UK,
frozen food purchases increased much less (from a 3% increase in fruit to a
19% increase in vegetables) while fresh fruit and vegetable consumption
increased. If COVID-induced changes in food purchasing patterns differed
between the UK and US, so too might COVID-induced changes in food waste
patterns.
Our conjecture is that the multiple stresses caused by the COVID-19 pan-
demic have stimulated improvements in household efficiency and resulted
in less food waste as part of “the new daily routine”that so many households
have created in response to changes. However, the onset of COVID-19 (and
the likely re-emergence of such disruptions until a vaccine is widely adopted)
may induce more transitions, ranging from panic-buying at the onset of stay-
at-home orders to changes in work schedules, living arrangements, food stor-
age capacity, and food service outlet availability. These transitions likely stim-
ulate more waste of food that may only appear during intermittent clean outs
or purges of home food storage areas. For nonperishable and frozen items,
these clean outs might not occur for many months or even years.
We believe several immediate opportunities exist to combat some of the
consumer-level COVID-related food waste issues highlighted above. First,
we recommend that local agencies devise campaigns that urge households
to scan their stocks of nonperishable shelf-stable items and donate or share
items purchased (or in the case of home gardening, planted) in panic but, in
retrospect, do not work well for their household. Second, we would urge
USDA and local emergency food agencies to work to further customize con-
tents of food boxes to ensure a match to the preferences of patrons. This works
both to reduce food waste as well as to enhance the autonomy of those who
find themselves dependent upon the emergency food system. Finally, with
more consumers cooking at home and limited dine-out options, educational
efforts focused on food management, cooking and preservation skills may
be better received and retained now more than ever.
Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy
408
Acknowledgements
Roe recognizes research support from the Van Buren program of Ohio State Univer-
sity; the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (Award
#OHOA1632); and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (2017-6702326268). The
authors thank editor Craig Gundersen and an anonymous reviewer for suggestions
to improve the manuscript. All remaining errors are those of the authors.
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