The Environmental Footprint of Retail Foods at Scale: A Multi-Country Analysis

Understanding the environmental impacts of food products is essential for a sustainable food systems transformation, yet such information remains sparse and non-standardized. Here we analyse nearly 475,000 products across 74 countries, quantifying the impacts on land use, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, eutrophication, and water stress. We find that the ranking of category-level environmental impacts is consistent across countries, with the highest impacts observed in categories such as animal products, coffee, nuts and seeds, and the lowest in fruits, vegetables, and beverages. However, the absolute impacts of products within categories vary across geographies due to differences in product composition and ingredient sourcing patterns. For some products, sourcing differences can substantially alter footprints, sometimes outweighing compositional differences, highlighting the potential for targeted supply chain interventions. Our study provides a robust, comparable methodology for estimating product-level environmental impacts that can support policies aimed at shifting demand toward lower-footprint foods.