Does circular reuse of chickpea cooking water to produce vegan mayonnaise reduce environmental impact compared with egg mayonnaise?

Consumers are increasingly asking for foods that are healthier, more humane, and environmentally sustainable. Recently, chickpea cooking water—aquafaba—has gained popularity as a potential egg substitute that complies with these criteria. However, research on the environmental impact of this ingredient is lacking. We performed a comparative attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) of mayonnaise made with aquafaba as the emulsifying agent, and traditional mayonnaise made with egg yolk. The vegan mayonnaise was found not to be as environmentally sustainable as the egg-based product. The vegan mayonnaise had a significantly (p < 0.05) lower impact across 4 categories, but a significantly higher impact across 8 categories out of 16, including climate change and resource-use-energy-carriers. The majority of categories under which vegan mayonnaise underperformed were related to the electricity needed for aquafaba processing. These impacts can be mitigated with a “cleaner” electricity grid, or onsite renewable electricity generation. Substituting the Mexican grid, where the aquafaba is currently processed, for the Canadian grid, where the mayonnaise is produced, reduced the carbon footprint of the vegan mayonnaise by 37%, making it similar to the egg-based product. As sunflower oil production was linked to extensive environmental burdens, we performed additional sensitivity analyses around oil processing, sunflower production, and other vegetable oils. Our study shows that substituting egg yolk with aquafaba could cause an increase in the environmental footprint of mayonnaise due to high processing costs, illustrating that vegan options do not always have a smaller environmental footprint, and can represent a trade-off in their comparatively more humane and healthier offer.