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Paper short abstract

This paper asks who benefits from food system transformations based on digital technology by examining the rebound effects of surplus monetisation on food charities, tensions between waste prevention and food security and explores structural pathways to reduce food waste and insecurity.

Paper long abstract

A key element of imagined food futures is the efficient management of flows to reduce food waste.

Drawing on research on food system sustainability conducted within the European project ToNoWaste, this paper explores the link between digital solutions for food waste and food charities. Exploratory interviews conducted in 2025 with coordinators of food redistribution organisations in Vienna, Austria, reveal a contradiction resulting from the deployment of efficiency-driven digital applications. Predictive software in retail or gastronomy or digital surplus-selling applications contribute to reducing the availability of food surplus. While positive for ressource efficiency, it considerably affects food charities, which currently rely on surplus generated by the food system’s inefficiency. These overflows therefore have, at least in part, a social function: despite normative concerns, for example that they do not contribute to healthy diets, they remain necessary within the current welfare state, particularly in times of crisis (Lambie-Mumford & Silvasti, 2020; Poppendieck, 2014; Riches, 2018).

Building on additional interviews with stakeholders from social markets, redistribution networks, and social organisations, I intend to interrogate charities’ dependence on food surplus, who benefits from digital food-system transformations, and pathways to reduce both waste and food insecurity.

Examining reorderings in the social realm, such as rebound effects that reduce opportunities for redistribution, the monetisation of food surplus, and the need for charities to reorganise in response this paper highlights tensions between waste prevention, overproduction, redistribution, and food security and argues for taking the reorderings and efficiency paradigm of digital food waste applications seriously.