Are meal kits environmentally friendly?
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- čas přidán 27. 05. 2024
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Wait a sec…how can meal kits (& grocery delivery services) POSSIBLY be sustainable?
𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰 𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘁𝘆-𝗴𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘁𝘆:
-Gee IM, Davidson FT, Speetles BL, and Webber ME (2019). Deliver me from food waste: model framework for comparing the energy use of meal-kit delivery and groceries Journal of Clear Production 236. www.sciencedirect.com/science...
-Gee IM, Heard B, Webber ME, and Miller S (2020). “The Future of Food: Environmental Lessons from E-Commerce," Environmental Science and Technology 54 (23): 14776-14784 pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs....
-Fenton K (2017). Unpacking the sustainability of Meal Kit Delivery : a comparative analysis of energy use, carbon emissions, and related costs for Meal Kit services and grocery stores. Master’s Thesis, University of Texas at Austin. repositories.lib.utexas.edu/b...
-Heard, BR et al (2019). Comparison of life cycle environmental impacts from meal kits and grocery store meals. Resources, Conservation and Recycling 147: 189-200 www.sciencedirect.com/science....
-Kan M, Miller SA (2022). Environmental impacts of plastic packaging of food products. Resources, Conservation, and Recycling 180: 106156. www.sciencedirect.com/science...
-Kunkel, CE (2020). Delivery or Not: The Effect of Grocery Delivery Services on Last Mile Emissions. Master's thesis, Harvard Extension School. dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/373...
-Wygonik E, Goodchild AV (2018). Urban form and last-mile goods movement: Factors affecting vehicle miles travelled and emissions. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment 61: 217-229. www.sciencedirect.com/science...
𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗱 (𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲) 𝗿𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀:
-www.wired.com/story/is-online...
-grist.org/article/should-i-tr...
-www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/...
-www.agclimate.net/2021/06/30/...
-www.washington.edu/news/2013/...
- • "Can Meal Kit Services...
𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗲𝗿-𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘁𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗺𝗲 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗰:
-Dr. Shelie Miller, School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan
-Dr. Isabella Gee, former postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin
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Researching and making this video gave me all sorts of feels; first, kind of depressed, because even if these delivery options *are* greener, it feels like we're trading one crappy thing (emissions) for another crappy thing (more plastic in the world). But also optimistic, because not only are there some easy things people can do to shop a bit more sustainably (no matter HOW they shop), there's also a lot of really interesting research happening that's going to make grocery shopping way greener in the future. What feels do you get from all this?
Do more research, I'd rather fight the box stores for greener packaging and delivery than create another massive source of pollution.
Hey! Did you know France has a law against supermarket food waste?
Do you think there should be a law that incentivises better packaging for food?
And have you heard about Strong Towns? They want to improve North American cities so that they are more walkable and bikable!
I do feel you on the fact that these kind of stuff only reduces the problem not solve it actually, however this kind of problem is extremely difficult to solve when the benefits and ease and convenience outweigh the problems heavily...
Feels? Car dependency sucks 😢
As you pointed out, the balance sheet can quickly tilt toward the grocery store. I only live a couple blocks from my grocer and usually ride my bike to pick up what I need for that day. This limits my emissions and waste. Even if I were driving, I can offset my emissions through various means but I cannot (at this point with current recycling infrastructure) offset the plastic waste.
I think the industry as a whole has a major issue with over packaging. For example, Costco sells 2 loaves of cottage white bread bundled together. Those two loaves have a brittle plastic sleeve around each loaf (I believe this is air tight to extend shelf life) surrounded by a traditional bread bag for each loaf, then those two double bagged loaves are put together in another plastic bag. That's 5 layers of plastic for 2 loaves of bread. Every time I get a large grocery order (increasingly rare these days) I fill the recycle bin and half of a garbage bag with packaging. It's ludicrous.
There's one other caveat that you didn't mention. The Gee et al paper points out that the last mile reductions only happen if meal kits reduce our store trips. Since meal kits don't provide breakfast and lunch, most people will still have to go buy milk, bread and fruit. Those are among the most perishable groceries, so they set the frequency of store trips. That means that instead of exchanging store trips for delivery trips and reducing last mile emissions, meal kits almost certainly add a delivery trips to the existing store trips, increasing last mile emissions.
Good point. Well, that and the conclusions being U.S.-specific. Heck, the one study was apparently based on a typical Austin, Texas resident. Texas is an very car-centric place, even by American standards.
Meanwhile, I subscribe to a GROCERY kit for many of my fruits, vegetables, and meats, and it really does reduce the frequency with which I need to visit the store.
As a Dutch person my grocery trips are by bicycle which would drastically alter the conclusion. I would love to see some more research on this that isn't US-centric
Excellent point
On the other hand, the meal kit might be replacing car trips to a restaurant or by a food-delivery-app driver.
What's more important, a given number of individual human lives or the protection of the Earth?
This is US specific, right?
Because as a student in Germany, me and basically everyone I know bikes to the store, which eliminates the car-travel aspect. Also, a lot of grocery stores sell the „ugly“ fruits and vegetables for a bit cheaper and you can get most if not all produce unpackaged. And where I‘m from in Germany, while not „legal“, dumpster diving is totally tolerated (meaning while the police could catch and fine you, the grocery shops themselves leave their dumpsters open and unprotected, because they know that what they have to get rid of by regulation is still good to eat!). So basically my point is: I like being a raccoon-man eating trash.
yes very US centric
yeah biking to the nearest store in the US could either be a very long trip in a rural area, or be basically suicide in a busy area because the roads are not safe for bikes, so I'm betting it's US focused
Had the same thoughts (also being from Germany) but also think your/our perspective here is quite student-exclusive. There are a lot of people who do their groceries by car and also, while I like the idea of "containern", after leaving university I basically met no one who does it.
Me, a working small-town Swede...
• Don't own a car.
• Walk or bike to the store.
• Store donate left-over food.
• I recycle at the in-block recycling point (50 metres /160 ft from my door)
In North America, EVERYTHING is FAR away, so cars are _mandatory._ Even when buses or subways are available, they're still limiting in how much you can carry because of volume and weight, not to mention you can't exactly walk into numerous stores carrying bags from other stores, which limits things even further. Therefore, cars are the only practical solution for shopping, you can't just make multiple trips by bike or foot since it's so far (and not free).
The last mile problem seems like a good reason for the US and Canada to have smaller, more numerous grocery stores that people can walk to. Outside NYC even in urban areas grocery stores seem to mostly have the same big box format in urban areas as they do in the burbs.
Yes, of course, that's the solution, like in most of the rest of the world where people walk or bike to the grocery-store and make multiple trips to get everything instead of loading up an SUV. The problem is that North America has this pesky little thing called "zoning" laws which generally prohibit this sort of thing. The best-case scenario is bodegas / convenience/corner-stores, which aren't exactly know for fresh foods. Also, North America is a car-centric hellhole.
@@I.____.....__...__ I think it's a viscious cycle. In order to justify selling higher quality/fresher groceries, the corner store needs more foot traffic. But when everyone opts to drive to Ralphs or Whole Foods instead, the corner store needs to... cut corners in strategic ways. There's nothing inherently different between a bodega and the types of small stores you see in Europe. They're just undervalued.
Walking? In this country paid for by auto industry lobbyists?
That said I am very grateful to have a grocery store in walking distance yet it still feels hardly safe enough to walk to the store because there's no sidewalk on my side of the street.
That's a feature of car dependency. We can thank auto manufactures for that hostile design of corporate friendly cities.
The problem here is that pretty much everything in the US is made for cars so one does not simply walk to the store. It's the whole infrastructure that need to be changed !
There's a meal kit service here in Canada that uses reusable packaging, which reduces the packaging problem. There's no box full of plastic bags, just a cooler bag full of robust tupperware-like containers. Every time you get a new kit delivered, they just pick up the cooler bag and reusable packaging from the old one at the same time. Having tried them, I found that the ingredients and recipes were much better quality. The only issue is that they're notably more expensive than their competitors.
What is the name of that service?
@@FalconFetus8 FreshPrep
Fresh prep is great! I found they were about the same price as hello fresh when I signed up, but with less garbage and better recipes.
@@kappamakizushi I refuse to use Hello Fresh outside of when they offer huge discounts because they're by far the worst quality box available. All of their competitors do better, and are usually cheaper too. Chef's Plate is my usual go-to because it's the cheapest, but I've had good experiences with GoodFood too.
That makes so much more sense! I can understand meal kits being helpful for some people. They should be run that way. There's more upfront cost to the company to buy the more robust packaging and clean it between customers but there's so much less waste with doing it that way.
I recently read an article that said something similar about online shopping. The economies of scale end up making it more environmentally friendly than driving to the store to buy items... granted, I think that breaks down when you order something small and it gets delivered in a 3ftx3ftx1ft box.
That sort of thing with large boxes for small items has to do with stacking boxes so that they properly pack inside a truck without shifting and damaging things. It does feel a bit wasteful with the cardboard though, but that'a not the main environmental impact of shipping.
Well, that's what I heard that in a reddit thread years ago anyway.
Or if you ride your bike or walk to the store
If your city is even remotely designed to be walkable because someone decided to add an area you can bike / walk through. I used to have a walking route to the store but then someone built a wall right up to the edge of the road so now I need to walk into the asphalt of the main street to walk to the store.
I can’t get over the incredible amount of packaging in these food delivery options. Regardless of the emissions, I can’t stomach adding that much plastic to the environment every week. It’s not ok. Id rather focus on trying to cut down on food waste and buying more sustainable food, than just shift the problem around.
Same here. There are a bunch of other ways I'm able to minimize my carbon footprint, so if I have to drive to the supermarket every other week or so to avoid a mammoth amount of packaging I'll do that.
There are circumstances I might still recommend it though - perhaps an old person who lives alone and doesn't eat much, and doesn't have space to store more than a few days of food at a time.
Another option is to just cut down on food altogether. It's a known fact that digestion accelerations aging, and the less you eat, the longer you live. If everybody ate the minimum they could to survive with only the occasional snack, the world would be utopia. 🤦
Worth keeping in mind that stores remove most items from packaging before placing them on shelves 'unpackaged'
I understand how you feel, but I think even if you reduced your waste to zero, you can't offset the waste from the grocer and producer
@mwalsher I mean, that maybe true but it'd be really easy to attempt to eat the minimum amount of food that's healthy and not eat nearly enough. Overweight may be a more common issue but underweight is not healthy either.
Sadly the amount of food in these grocery deliveries is no way near enough for me. And it is more expensive most of the time too...
Also, I walk by foot and hardly waste any food at all. So for my, buying in the store is just the best solution
I too find portions to be abysmally small these days, I can't fathom eating less in the past (or maybe it's just packages just used to be bigger and shrinkflation makes it seem like you're eating a lot because you now eat the whole package alone where as you used to share one package for the whole family 😒). Regardless, eating = aging, so the less you eat, the longer you live. Maybe try to use that as motivation.
yea these grocery delivery kits just aren't sustainable for families of 4 and up. It just isn't going to work. It's best to buy in bulk when you can to save money. Dried beans and grains can last for a long time and are cheaper in the long run when compared to canned. You can also help the environment by cutting out meat and dairy from your diet.
@@I.____.....__...__ Can you source that information? Because I cannot find a single credible scientific article mentioning this.
The idea of prior-to-purchase waste is a significant factor though, as most who have worked in back-of-shop for groceries would be able to anecdotally support.
I think there's a problem with the calculation in isolation in that people need to go the grocery store *anyway* to get other staples like bread and milk, coffee/tea, etc. It's far better to also pick up dinner than it is to have a meal kit delivered on top of my store trip. The transport emissions can't really be counted the way meal kit companies want you to until the meal kits actually completely or mostly displace your store trips.
That's a good point. We're not considering what a person might also be ticking off their list in one trip to the grocery store anyways. A lot of people just do one big trip where they do a majority of their shopping for more than just food/groceries and stop at other stores/places on the way to and back. On paper it's logical, but in actuality there are too many factors that make the cut-and-dry conclusion of being more carbon-emission-friendly than not using a meal kit. idk how anyone would be able to accurately gauge how actually efficient a meal kit would be, but it feels a little disingenuous to just say it's better for the environment than shopping as you normally would.
I walk to the grocery store and rarely throw any food out, so meal kits don’t make sense for my household
Either you're not in North America where _everything_ if FAR away, or you got lucky there was a store near your home (and that was affordable-"food deserts" doesn't just mean no stores at all, if there's a grocery store across the street from your home but everything is insanely expensive, it may as well not exist).
Same, I'm swedish, so I just walk to the nearest store (which is literally next door) and buy food there.
@@I.____.....__...__ I live in Toronto, Canada. There are 2 supermarkets within 5 minutes of walking. I bring my own bag, and pretty much don't throw anything out.
@@I.____.....__...__ A much higher proportion of Canadians than Americans live in cities I know are walkable and support decent transit.
Wait, wait, wait. On average, people buy 5 meals at a grocery store? I literally only go once a week, so that means 21 meals. Invert that, 5 meals per trip and 21 meals per week, that's 4 grocery runs per week? Seriously, that's the average?!
I skimmed through references a little - didn't find the exact source but it looks like a lot of meals are things like lunch at school/work and eating out.
ex. The Fenton reference uses 14 meals per week, and says "Although a typical person eats around 21 meals per week, this amount accounts for meals outside the home and consolidated purchasing for multiple meals (i.e. 1 quart of yogurt for a several days of breakfasts). This assumption is supported by research by Smith et al. that found between 65 and 72% of consumed food is supplied from the home (Smith, Ng, & Pompkin, 2013)".
It uses a "Food Marketing Institute" source for a 1.85 trips per week number though, which ends up with 7.5 meals/trip instead of 5. Not sure which paper gives the 5 number instead. (Also wonder if the unit is really supposed to be "per person per trip", and the average purchase size is higher through consolidating a whole household's groceries together into a single trip. [edit] I checked the FMI source and it might even be the opposite instead, with other people than the primary "shopper" making trips too!)
That strikes me as odd too. Maybe they meant 5 days worth of meals? Because that seems very reasonable to me. Or they don't count breakfast (because it's just cereal, that's not a full meal, right?) And they don't count lunch (because people buy that at work or eating leftovers?) So they're just counting dinners? I would guess that many people do one big grocery run on the weekend and one smaller run in the middle of the week.
I'm not convinced about the food waste reduction. Aren't the meal kit companies also going to select better looking produce and all? And another thing to consider with meal kits is the tons of time it takes to deal with the packaging, especially if you want to recycle what you can.
if i had a nickel for every hellofresh box i've seen sit in my building's lobby for weeks i'd be rich
I wonder what the comparison looks like when one doesn't drive to the store though. I never do and neither does anyone around me. It helps that there are at least 4 supermarkets within walking distance but that's pretty normal in my country.
The food-delivery companies elided over that factor in their analysis because it hurts their self-serving point. 😒
@@I.____.....__...__ More likely this was glossed over because they only thought about/cared about the USA, where this is pretty universally true. This is basically what they said at the end of the video.
@@I.____.....__...__ , it wasn't that they ignored it but that they looked at the average (as stated in the video), and the average American drives. I don't know anyone in my town that would walk to the store to get groceries. For me, specifically, it is a 15 mile trip to the closest one (with no sidewalk for the first 14 miles of it). The US is much bigger and more spread out than a lot of these countries where people walk to stores.
@@SgtSupaman I think it is more that those countries are designed differently. Sure there are edge cases but if you look at rural Germany you'll find a supermarket or two located right in the middle of a village or small city. That way the vast majority of people can walk or cycle to set supermarket. The same holds in the Netherlands and a lot of other countries.
In cities supermarkets are even closer and it is very rare that you don't have a supermarket within a 5-10min walking distance. That might also be the result of people being used to walking to the supermarket and so opening a supermarket in a location where that is not the case results in a lot of customers without much competition.
That's different from driving being the standard, where an extra 5 min won't make a large difference in the number of daily customers.
As other comments pointed out, even in the US, the assumption that meal kits decrease the number of trips is very dubious. Most people don't live entirely on meal kits, and breakfast often involves highly perishable items like milk. And if you live 4.4 miles from a supermarket, you were probably trying to do weekly or biweekly shopping anyway. So you likely make the same number of trips, just buying a bit less because of the meal kits.
That time when "It depends" becomes a disappointing yet the only responsible way to answer a yes or no question...
I've heard that the toxicity of plastic packaging is understudied, so that's a whole other thing. We really gotta push to bring paper back.
Is paper better than hemp?
Yeah, the amount of plastic in those boxes are so atrocious. I know people that say they recycle the plastics, but we know literally 95% of them go to garbage anyway. And we'll end up eating all that.
It's not quite as simple as switching to paper. From the plastic bag episode on this channel, paper packaging can have many times higher carbon impacts. But there are wide berths of types of plastic packaging, types of food, and types of paper packaging in this subject. More studies need to be done isolating those sections to make a decision on paper vs plastic packaging. It could be that a specific type of plastic is best for health and environmental concerns.
@@Homerow1 Worth considering it's not just about carbon footprint, there's also stuff like landfill space and harvesting impact.
If nothing else, the egg carton could be made of pressed cardboard pieces. It's actually a thing in my area at least.
Also, I rarely see a busted egg in the store, even though the egg cartons around here (Germany) are made from cardboard and don't have the additional cover.
@@brandy1011 I think much of that breakage is a last mile issue, meaning one can be more or less careful storing the egg-box on the way home.
@@rivi7197
I never considered breakage as a factor, when it comes to cardboard vs plastic containers for eggs. I'm also from Germany and haven't seen eggs in a plastic carton in decades (aside from already hard-boiled eggs).
Breakage is an issue, though. I always look into the carton before putting it in my basket, because occasionally there will be a cracked one. Sometimes the cashiers will check as well. So they do occasionally break before purchase.
Never had an issue getting them home safely, though. Aside from maybe the odd 'once a year freak accident', maybe.
That's more a matter of being used to handling that particular item with care, I think - same as you would with tomatoes or an avocado.
wait, it isn't the default?
@@advanceringnewholder at the stores around my city most of them are styrofoam
Seems to me that just by ordering to the grocery store and being careful about food waste you can personaly reduce even more
Only works if, after you've ordered delivery groceries, you NEVER then go to the stores (y'know to buy for the meals that would have been provided by left-overs). Everyone I know gets delivery meal kit AND buys from the grocery stores
I think this is very US specific because of the transportation and packaging factor. In the US, because of the suburban sprawl everyone is forced to take their cars on a few kilometres trip just to get groceries or whatever. That adds a lot of carbon emissions from the vehicles themselves. Not to mention the whole lot of plastic and cartons and packaging stuff you get when you buy them from a big box grocery store. Where I live (third world SEA country), we usually walk to the nearest local store to get everything we needed, without all the plastic packaging and such if you were to get the same thing from a big box grocery store.
the real packaging problem is not at home, but in the factories. i know cent big products that are used in the hundrets to thousands of pieces per week, that are packaged EACH ONE separately inside a sealed plastic bag. and no it isn't something that rusts or goes bad with air contact. it is stuff like the headphone connector pins or small electro line filter boxes (6cm² and 2 cm high).
or the 50 meter plastic wrap around ONE palette with goods on it.
This makes me think about some research I heard about the deabte between reusable grocery bags vs disposable, in that the number of uses for reusable to offset the other environmental costs of its production is often well beyond their expected lifespan. certainly not what most people, myself included expected
Although the old plastic bags have other considerations beyond just the CO2 emissions to make and distribute them. (They look exactly like jellyfish which is terrible for sea turtles that exclusively eat jellys. Not to mention the general issue of microplastics and entangling wildlife.)
I'm curious about a super in-depth comparison of single use plastic bags, brown paper bags, and various types of reusable bags. (Plastic vs cloth)
If you see your old cotton bags up with dental floss they’ll stay strong through many more shopping trips!😅
@@jasonreed7522 OTOH I personally can re-use plastic bags way more than paper bags.
I was so going to argue with this but then the caveats part made me a convert. Our family is really good about wasted food. And we don't go grocery shopping for a couple things, nor do we go grocery shopping without another trip already, so the extra driving for the grocery store is only what is needed to pull into the parking lot. We also frequently buy clearance foods at the store because, well, they're cheaper. But that means that the store isn't throwing it away.
Anyway, long story short, I'm confident that our grocery ways are MUCH more "green" than a meal kit (and are also SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper too). However, this video did show me how the meal kits are not as "un-green" as I'd always assumed. So that's a good thing for sure. They'll never beat our per-meal price of grocery shopping our way, but that's to be expected because we are VERY efficient in our shopping and prices we pay.
I dream of having the superpower of being able to digest plastic food packaging for energy to save the world.
There are bacteria that do eat plastics and produce ethanol
If governments globally make the plastic producers responsible for disposal then things will change fast
Your altruistic heart is something to be cherished, thank you, kind stranger! 🙏🏼
@@paradox... That's one way of looking at things, the other angle though is look at all the free food you would have if you could digest plastic!
to me, these meal kits seem great for people new to shopping for/making their own food (like college kids for example) because it gives you healthy recipes + good portion control ideas, with foolproof instructions. it seems more sustainable than buying a bunch of incorrect ingredients from the store, or buying stuff like spices just to realize you don't like it and then never try it again. it also seems good for people with limited time or mobility, since they might otherwise turn to less sustainable easy options.
4:10 - Egg cartons over here in Europe (Croatia, anyway) are made of, well, cardboard, or, more precisely, pressed recycled (and further recyclable) paper pulp. It is excellent in preventing egg breakage. And, yes, we don't wash our eggs so that we don't have to refrigerate them, and salmonella contamination is _extremely_ rare, so we _do_ eat our raw, unpasteurized eggs.
Another solution to the last mile problem (Although it is a bit infrastructure-heavy) is walking or cycling. I almost never drive to get groceries, because the store is walking distance away and my town/country has sidewalks.
Meal kits might be a good option for one or two people. But when you're cooking for a large family, it's a lot cheaper and less wasteful to just buy stuff in bulk at a local store. If you do that, limit shopping to once or twice per week, and save dinner leftovers to eat for lunch the next day, grocery stores are so much better than meal kits in every way!
Unfortunately, the video makes the point that a lot of people just don't/won't follow those "if"s, so the first part does apply to them. Let's just say that the viewers of this video seem to be a bit more conscientious of these things than "average people" already.
It doesn't even have to be in bulk. Nobody drives to the store to get ingredients for a single meal then returns again the next day and the day after that and so on, they go to the store to get a bunch of stuff that's on sale that week and fill the fridge and make meals for the next few weeks from it. (Though there does seem to be an increasing trend of people being incapable of cooking and just ordering takeout for EVERY SINGLE MEAL. 😒)
Solution for packaging: inspired by old milk delivery. Each package is reusable. When the new box is picked up, last week's box is picked up. Each box is made to be shipped out repeatedly, packaging is ready to be cleaned and reused. Ice packs are the common reusable kind too. This solution does not increase any driving, just requires that the packaging gets cleaned. Each step of the delivery is a swap of new for old.
Stores also throw away a lot of packaging that you just don't see as a buyer, although I think a lot of it is cardboard rather than plastic. So even the naked peppers were packaged for transport to the store.
I want to add a comment about the last mile problem. I don't have scientific literature as a source for this but am just repeating after my professor for traffic studies.
While it's true that a delivery vehicle on a planned tour burns far less gas than dozens of individual cars driving to the grocery store and back, he said that studies investigating this often exclude the disruption to traffic flow that those deliveries cause. Delivery Vehicles often stop on the street while they bring the boxes to the door. During that time, other cars have to drive around them, usually by switching lanes and slowing down the traffic on those other lanes. This only adds a very small delay to each of their journeys, but it adds it to a large amount of cars. And when they need longer for the same distance, they burn more fuel. He's not saying that Delivery is therefor worse than shopping on your own, just that most studies exclude this factor and that the positive impact of delivery is therefore smaller. But it's unclear how much smaller it is, due to the lack of studies on this topic.
I definitely drive far distances to get my groceries, but I buy everything in bulk, buy 20-30 meals at a time, and I produce less than 2kg of food waste per year (meal prepping/leftovers galore plus a LOT of repetition) so I'd like to think meal kits might not be advantageous for my situation, although I enjoyed learning how close it can come.
For very similar reasons, some products can be (typically) more sustainable when packed in plastic that allows for Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP) that can keep them fresh longer and help reduce food waste.
Of course, this decision when made in the production process must assume certain factors of how much will be thrown away on average, including unsold products by the supermarket; whereas you making a personal decision when you shop can be more focused on your personal use: if you know you'll be eating it on the same day, an unpacked alternative is probably more sustainable, but if you need to keep it a couple of days before you consume it, then the packaged version is probably better to ensure it'll last (and that you don't have to makre another trip to the supermarket, especially if you'd do so by car).
There's also parallels with local produce vs things from further away; because the last mile is usually the biggest factor in transport emmissions, whether the product came from a local producer or one on the other side of the world may not impact transport emissions all that much (to help grasp this: consider that a large number of products can be shipped on a container ship, so that ship's emmissions will be divided over all those products, thus making it a small cost, whereas your car or a small truck transports a lot less, and thereby much less efficiently). Meanwhile, large scale production canhave significant scale efficiency on how sustainable things are produced as well (and this scale efficiency is also why large scale transport is more sustainable per product than small scale transport), and as a result, whilst transporting from further away may increase transport emissions by a little, the benefits from scale efficiency in production can often weigh against them, thus making something that's produced far away on large scale more sustainable than somrthing produced locally on a small scale.
The complexity of reality often contradicts our gut instincts and the image we associate with local products and packaging free products.
I feel like this is true *ONLY* in places like america, where a lot of people are driving a car ~20 minutes each way for each shopping trip, and not for places where people typically walk or cycle for their shopping, which has only negligible carbon footprint for that last mile
There are some groceries that bag up a bunch of veggies that are starting to spoil and sell it for a nominal price, like let's say six peppers for a dollar - kind of a bargain bin for veggies. While you'll probably have to trim away a lot bad veggies to get at what you need to cook, you'll still come out ahead, and you'll be doing a lot to reduce food waste.
One more reason I prefer buying in bulk. Even the more expensive Costco membership can easily pay for itself in the first month, depending on how much you've put off shopping and how much storage space you're working with.
Yes, but this only works for dry or canned stuff, you can't exactly buy milk or vegetables or meat or bread in bulk, especially since these days, food seems to spoil FAST, nothing lasts anymore (and no, it's not because they used to use preservatives and stopped, it's something else).
@@I.____.....__...__ I get what you're saying but you can absolutely buy vegetables, meat, and bread in bulk. Store it all in a chest freezer and you don't spend that much on electricity either. Granted, you can't freeze all vegetables and fruits, but the few that you can absolutely make it worth it. Weirdly, here in Argentina we got to the point where sometimes buying fresh vegetables is more expensive than buying the pre-packaged and pre-cut freezed bags of thinks like carrots. And about milk, we don't use much milk in my household so we buy one or two bags of powdered milk each month and that's more than enough, and we don't throw out spoiled milk anymore.
In Europe in every major city, store is usually within walking distance and if not, as others have pointed out, people also bike to stores so that makes driving emissions insanely lower. Portioning is subjective and shouldnt influence this. You can buy less things if see that you end up throwing food away
Grocery store package sizing makes food waste reduction very difficult. Either you use a meal planner or you eat the same thing every day. Even when I lived in Europe my choices were individually packaged items or buying in bulk and likely wasting food. Plus, the convenience of walkable stores generally comes via more restocking trucks and more frequent deliveries.
Also, don't discount the quality of life improvement that comes from meal variety (especially when that variety comes with very little cognitive load). I contribute a lot of my resilience during COVID lockdown to the novelty of something different to eat each night.
This is probably your best video! Really clear explanation of a fairly complicated subject matter - great stuff
We had a meal prep service for our shared flat with 2 persons. It was really great to get new recipes we never would have tried otherwise. And the portionised packaging is really useful, because we don't have a big fridge and it's hard to get small packages in the store (1 kg of carrots or potatoes is just too much for one or even two meals). But the ammount of packaging is really nasty. And we live aprox. 500 m away from the next grocery stores. The last deal breaker were packages that were left at our front door, in thew sun, in summer - you can imagine, that the contents weren't so usable anymore.
I wish grocery companies would sell more perishable food in smaller packages without making it way overpriced. Shit's tough when someone is single and ends up wasting food because you can't eat it all in time.
I think the Milk Man model would work well for delivered food in the long run. All directly reusable packaging that is picked up everytime you get a new delivery, washed, and then repacked for the next customer.
One principle in "How to Keep House While Drowning" by KC Davis is that you can't do much good for the environment while you're floundering yourself -- that taking care of yourself first *is* ethical and good, and if you get to a better state of mental/physical health, you can do more good at that point. So she said, for example, that if your house is full of clutter that you can't get a handle on, go ahead and toss that recycling -- you don't have the extra energy to deal with recycling at the moment, so accept that it's going in the trash and use the energy you would've spent on recycling (and shame over failing at it) to improve other areas.
So I could see that one aspect of meal kits / delivery options is how beneficial it can be for people who need to cut down on various stages of the eating-healthy process: decision making, shopping, driving, prep, etc.
Much like how I can see some global and ethical benefit to going more veggie / less meat, to enjoying more meat alternatives like Quorn (which I enjoy), and to lobbying for more ethical treatment of food animals, but I rank those low to nonexistent on my priority list, because there are *so many other* factors in my life right now that need addressing before I can even begin to worry about the treatment of the food I eat (even though what baby chickens go through horrifies me). And that's not even counting budget sustainability, because buying more expensive eggs from more ethical farmers means not having as much money to acquire the other parts of the food this household needs.
Might I ask you to consider covering that kind of concept -- the least onerous ways to improve food ethics, when you're treading water and can't do very much at all? Like I know I probably can't do much -- heck, I can't even judge how much energy I'll have over the next three days and therefore how much of the food I'm buying will get wasted from me not having the energy to turn it into edible stuff like I'd planned while in the store. Hence why I buy less fresh produce, even though I *love* mushrooms, and buy more canned goods and dried pasta (even though I shouldn't be eating so much pasta), because they won't go bad before I get to them (most of the time), and canned soup is much easier to portion out and enjoy without effort. But surely there are some much smaller ways in which I could take some better steps without using up my limited psychological energy / spoons?
P.S. Additional detail is that I have some executive function disorder (likely ADHD), and therefore am easily distracted, have issues with memory, and have significant difficulty with multi-step processes. Which is why it's common for me to exclaim "Why do people let me cook??!" after having ruined yet another meal through inattention or time-management issues.
Observations from Sweden;
My select meal kit delivery have actually moved away from exact amount of ingredients, this could either be a fluke from select meal from a list, or that it's cheaper to have an abundance of ingredients compared to labor costs.
In Sweden recently our recycling of plastics have been 'disproven' because it was to difficult to sort, so more and note is burnt.
It's a while series on P3 I belive, can edit in the name later.
And on another note.
Most meal kits are probably more nutritional complete than home cooking.
If people stick to the mealkit and don't over indulge on other we could have a heat renaissance in health!
(which would contribute alot to reducing emissions)
Glad to hear someone take a look into this - thank you! I had a meal box for a while pre covid that reused a lot of its stuff. You could put ur freezer pack and the insulated box it came with in your drop off location on delivery day and they would pick them up and reuse them. This always eased a small bit of my climate anxiety but im glad to hear these were actually better than I thought they were.
Every time I look at an average like 7.7km for driving to the store, I think of the number of people who walk: if 7.7km is average, and you subtract off the people who don't drive, how high is the average for the people who do drive? Yikes. :(
I feel like the Last Mile problem is overstated. If we calculate assuming everyone lives miles away from the store and drives directly to the store and then home, sure, it may be more polluting than a truck. But like... that isn't the common experience, is it?
Especially if you live a long way from a grocery store, you probably don't just go straight there and straight home. Normally you combine trips -- you hit the grocery as one of several stops you need to make. My grocery stops cost almost zero emissions because I can't skip driving to work, and the grocery is along one of my possible routes home. At worst, it's a very slight detour to my commute, so even if I only pick up two things, the actual cost of transportation is negligible. I was going to go home after work anyway.
There's so many variables in the "what is an average shopping trip" calculation that I feel that gives ample opportunities to kind of pick your numbers to give whatever result you wanted to produce.
I tried a meal prep box once and it was nice... it got me eating foods I wouldn't normally buy. But the best part to me was that all of the spices, condiments, and ingredients that would come in single-use cup containers came in hard screw-top nalgene food containers. In other words, these are reusable and reuse I do. I use these for packing food when camping and traveling. And when I have too many or the plastic degrades enough that I don't want to put food in them, I use them as geocache containers or storage for other small items around the house. So some meal prep companies are going the extra mile to give you more value than just the food.
The answer made sense to me as soon as I saw the headline “greener than driving to the store”. It’s exactly the same as how public transportation is more fuel efficient than personal cars. “Public transportation” but for groceries.
For green topics would be nice to tackle need to boil water vs just heat it up and amount of water needed for pasta and all the bs tied to it sticking together etc. As the energy required vastly differs.
Worth noting the search term for this is "passive cooking". Pattern is basically: add pasta to boiling water as normal, rolling boil 2 minutes, then turn off and put on lid. Leave pasta in for the recommended cooking time minus 1 minute. (Subtract an additional minute for thin ~5 min pastas. Use the same time for very thick ~12-minute ones.)
@@AySz88 yup I also experimented with not reaching boiling point with quite good results but the lower I went the longer it took and got more uniform hydration of the pasta which is fine for me but most people want al dente. Going ftom ~70°C to 90 still takes considerable amount of fuel. Also while boiling point is nice and easy starting point it's not always necessary not only for pasta.
The US is crazy. Where I live in south america I can walk less than 200 meters in any direction and find several markets and stores to get food. Getting super fresh food daily is doable and probably faster than driving 7~8km
id like to see the numbers for buying groceries in a place where people can walk/bike/metro/tram to their nearest market (often on the way home from work) and pick up just what they need for the day. id imagine those numbers make groceries much better than meal kits
Where I live, we drive to the get groceries, but rarely leave home specifically for it. We use opportunities like leaving my kid at school to stop by. Also we always buy great amounts (but making sure little food ends up on the garbage), recycle most of our trash and avoid packaging food way too much.
But I can't say the same for my fellow citizens. My mom, for instance, uses way to much disposable goods.
It's definitely a complicated issue with lots of variables, but I'd say most it starts with consumer habits.
3:10 this part I think is what is breaking the balance. If people did not use cars for grocery shopping this wouldn't be a problem. There are also grocery delivery options some of which use electric cars
There's a company in the UK called oddbox. They take the food that is too mishapen to go to grocery stores like Tesco. They then deliver them to your door, and the packaging level is low too. From this analysis that indicates that they double down on the good stuff and drop the bad stuff :)
Absolutely US specific.
I eat most of what I buy, and have many shopping places within walking and even more within biking and public transit distance.
For large shopping I do take a car, because I can't carry all of it. But then that's buying in bulk, frozen things, canned things, detergents, stuff that's usually shelf stable.
And I eat _a lot_ of meat on a very specific diet. I haven't seen a non-custom meal plan ever hit the levels I eat (think 500g (~1.1lbs) of meat a day) and it's way cheaper to buy in bulk and pre-portion myself.
It would be good to at least have the emissions broken down by at least the main categories. e.g. grocery shopping is on the way home from work for me so no extra mileage (well a 2 block detour plus maybe 100m inside the carpark) so comparing the other factors without the 'last mile' calculation would be enlightening for individual circumstances.
3:50 seems more like having a car dependent infrastructure is the real culprit here, again. If the grocery store was within walking or cycling distance and it was safe to walk or cycle there then many groceries would be getting picked up without the emission of any groceries at all, completely eliminating the last mile problem all together.
"munch on bell peppers on the way from the store"
This video speaks to my soul
In the past I have been tempted by meal kit services due to living in a rural area here in NSW (110km/70mi drive to the nearest big box store, mall or cinema for example), but due to other factors in my life it's not viable for me to do a proper home-cooked meal without a lot of wastage, so every 3-4 months I get a stock up of frozen meals from the grocery store in the next town over (40km/25mi away) and otherwise on a weekly basis order short-term perishables such as sandwich components and fruit/veg from that store in the next town over.
It used to be every few months dad & I would bulk-order frozen meals from the local grocery store and drive them home whilst like twice a week I would walk down for sandwich materials and fruit/veg, but April last year the local grocery store burnt down (electrical fire from old faulty fridges) so we started driving to the next town over until dad passed in mid-July, at which point I switch to online ordering and deliveries from the next town grocery store due to not being licensed to drive (on top of panic attacks trying to take control of the manual transmission car).
i don't have time to go to supermarket more than twice a month. I usually buy for 2 to 4 weeks. and never go There only for shipping. I go to supermarket only because I am driving less than 500m away for other reasons.
then I buy fresh vegetables and fruits at the local store in my street, also by car, but also only when I am driving less than 150m away for other reasons. this means, if I don't have time, or don't have reasons to drive around, I may not do shopping for 3 or 4 weeks.
so yes, I store over 60 meals.
Love these videos. Keep answering all the important kitchen questions!
A lot of us were taught that being environmentally friendly is not throwing things in the trash, and the more things you don’t throw in the trash the more environmentally friendly you are. But the waste you throw away in your trash is tiny compared to all the consumption that happens out of sight by industrial processes
Well, the meal kits are, from my perspective, as much packaging intensive as store bought food - absolute vast majority of food is packaged in single-use plastics.
Combining this with less wasted food and more relevant portions, it seems better for me.
Unless you have your own home farm or live in are where there is an option of non-packaged food purchase, you might be better of.
Still, should we be able to replace single use plastics with, for example, banana cellulose packaging, that would be a different tune altogether.
I think this was my favorite video by y'all so far. Thoroughly mind-blowing (and -changing).
Here in Germany, 35% of foods are wasted. Notably only 7% of that happens in markets, but 59% in households.
But that household waste could probably still reduce notably with ready meals, since people don't have to stock as many things that could go bad.
3:36 5 grams of cheese -> plastic wrapped.
7 mini cherry tomatoes -> plastic wrapped.
5 ml of premade red sauce -> plastic wrapped. And so on.
So much more plastic used per gram of food. Can't nobody tell me that is sustainable, no matter what savings you might have in other aspects.
I work in a transit hub for a company that carries a lot of these kits. The number that we throw out because they get damaged/the label comes off/they aren't supposed to be shipped by us, is abysmal. Like we'll get a trailer with 26 pallets of these kits and by the time we're done 2 pallets worth are in QA, and heading to the dumpster. And we're just one link in the chain.
I don't know how these companies stay in business, but they sure as hell aren't as sustainable as they seem just looking at what's arrive at your door.
Oh my god, know I have a lot of doubts. In my case I live in Spain and we usually go to the grocery walking, also there's this little shops where you can buy fruits and vegetables and 90% of the time the food doesn't have any plastic bag covering it so I think in this case the "best option" is go walking to these little shops. But now I am 100% sure, thanks for adding more doubts to my life T.T
Talking more seriously, thanks for the video, super helpful!!
The good thing is that I feel like the people who would use meal kits the most are the people who are more likely to waste food and so it’s a perfect pair. (At least for college students and single young people)
I tried meal kits for a while, didn't work out for me due to my allergy and how I deal with it. The meal kit required me to either fill my week with foods I don't enjoy, or buy replacement for certain ingredients while offloading things my immune system doesn't like on friends and family. It was causing additional trips with the car, while still requiring the usual trip to the store.
I’ve never subscribed to those delivery food boxes because I had the same assumptions. I wonder if most of there client base complement the delivery with SOME grocerie shopping as well (For snacks and drinks, for exemple). Wouldn’t that cancel the delivery benefits of not driving to the stores?
Yes, great point! The savings are biggest when delivery completely replaces in-store shopping - when they are a total add-on (i.e. you are doing your normal shopping AND getting regular deliveries), you lose any savings whatsoever.
It really depends. Statistically they're likely to make small trips anyway. For the meals provided by the kits, it can reduce the carbon emissions.
Plastics, on the other hand, are horrendous.
I was wondering about this, because I did spend some time doing my one research (not an actual researcher, just googling) to figure out if it would at least make financial sense to subscribe to a meal kit service. I already make a point about only going to the store if it's on the way home from work or class. If I run out of something on a day that I'm working from home or over the weekend, I keep a small stock of frozen meals to fall back on to get me through to a day when I work on-site or have class, so I can stick to grocery shopping just being a stop on my commute, instead of being another commute altogether. I have a feeling I would be an outlier in that last mile problem.
I buy loose-leaf tea from a company that puts their tea in compostable plastic, so you can put the packaging in a compost bin after use. I wish we could require all food producers to do the same, at least for the percentage of foods than can be stored in this type of packaging.
The last mile is easily solved by living in a livable walkable & cyclable city, with supermarkets nearby. If everybody did their groceries on foot or by bicycle, ALL emissions would be eliminated, and the delivery van would be infinitely worse, even if it's electric.
9 out of 10 times, I walk or cycle to the store, like most people in my country. I only use a car when I need some heavy items. And even then, I've got a choice of 13 supermarkets within a 5 kilometre radius, and that's actually the case in all big and medium cities here.
If they used paper packaging (and yes, waxed paper packets can work with moist ingredients) that would help the sustainability.
I'd like to see this study done in a place that isn't reliant on cars to go grocery shopping.
I don't own a car and just walk around the corner to the store to get my stuff.
I made bad experiences with food delivery. Herbs were brown, beans were moldy, cooling was interrupted. I'ver tried it out for three weeks and threw more away than when I would have brought it fresh. Never again!
On the bagged mini peppers, it looks like there are pre-cut holes in the bag. Is there a second bag inside keeping them sealed off?
There is a lot of garbage wasted on our behalf that we don't see. The delivery service has a ton of packaging that we do see, but the grocery stores also have tons of waste that we don't see. When I eat one fast food meal, there is more waste there than my family produces in a day or two.
I noticed the "Organic" label on a lot of your items. A deep dive into whether or not these are actually healthier/tastier/environmentally friendly would be a good topic for this channel.
Dont forget that switching Food can also affect the amount of waste.
If you buy potatoes instead of different kind of food that needs to be canned/cooled, than you save on storage, and often on the other factors, too.
I live in an apartment with 7 major grocery stores in a 5-mile radius. For exercise, I do all my shopping by bicycle. I plan all meals carefully and never have leftovers. I choose minimal and recyclable packaging. For me, meal delivery would have negative impact.
How fucked up does our transportation network have to be that going to the store requires driving a car and thereby making food deliveries the better option. Good to see the other factors mentioned toward the end of the video.
I buy my groceries right around the corner. _Having to_ drive to buy some milk or bread is ridiculous. I do occasionally drive to a hypermarket but only to buy long storage life food in bulk, like once a couple of months or less often. Normally, I just drop in a supermarket when walking home from a bus stop after work. And I'm not wasteful. My parents were and are strict on this matter and grew me up accordingly.
Meal kits don't feel green at all. There seems more details missing behind the scenes.
Who drives specifically to a store for food every day? You either take one specific trip per week or stop on the way home each day. These studies have to be in the US where there is no mixed zoning as everywhere else would have corner shops and you wouldn't be making daily trips if you lived there.
I haven't lived in a single place where I didn't pass at least one shop on my way home from work or school.
Am I missing something around 2:40? Because in the non meal kit, I have to be accounted for what happens before the store, in the store and what other are doing with their food (wasting it), but the meal kit dont have to account for step 1 and 2? Where do they get their supplies from? Do every mail-order-food-service have their own cows, crop-fields and green houses?
I of course get the saving on reducing a households food waste, by buying tiny dinners for small (or white collar) people, but it seems to be that the meal service should be also slapped with the first to steps, since they buy their grocceries from suppliers, do they not?
They definitely do pick nicer looking produce - that is (mostly) consistent with the grocery supply chain. The big savings come from knowing *exactly* how much to buy, since these companies plan recipes based on what they can get at the time, and know *exactly* how many customers are getting any given meal (whereas grocery stores buy WAY more than they need, both to present shoppers with options and to account for fluctuating sales)
@@MinuteFood I was unclear in what I meant.
If I understand correctly, in the regular line of buying grocceries, you would say it creates X amount of emissions, and 1 reason is because of the waste in the whole supply line.
(The waste in the productions (2:36 in the video), the waste from the store (2:39) and then the waste by the consumer (2:42))
But then it is compared to the prep-meals, as if they created the supplies from thin air.
Even if they buy exact amounts, they buy them from somewhere - so they also should be accounted for atleast the step 1 in the chain (2:36)?
But I guess that is accounted for (as shown in the graph at 2:23, they still produce waste.
It was just in the way it was juxtaposed, it felt like they - by their exactness - was not a part of the system (hence my question if they produced everything from their own backyard).
It would be perfect if it was at all possible to compare the delivered box use to what the clients of those boxes actually have for habits (the illustrated 5 meals per trip to the store? replace delivery by the meal prep box? People who already know how to cook and just want a break, people who do more than 5 meals trips to the store and don't do delivery very much?)
Alas, we do what we can with the data we have.
Now I guess the question is: you, the way YOU do groceries/waste, are the boxes doing worse, same, or better than your own habits? (me, it would fall into the worse category, soooo it would be a treat).
ON THE OTHER HAND
I can see people with mental health issues (when I'm depressed, boy oh boy) and mobility issues and even proximity to fresh foods finally getting decent meals, if only a few per week.
There's a LOT to think about!!!!
i can understand to buy a sack of potatoes or two from a local farmer if you have the storage space, and the same for rice or beans or even cheese, or olive oil, instead of the grocery store (thus removing a whole lot of the middleman packaging and profit). i think though that the motive behind the "meal in a kit" business is simple profit and convenience (as it is with every delivered good, pizzas for example) and every paper you just mentioned is an attempt to greenwash an unsustainable practice.
So.. has anyone measured the hybrid solution? That is, instead of driving to the market to buy food, we order groceries online from the supermarket and have it delivered by the supermarket. That should cut down on a the last mile problem too.
I love how North America centric the articles are because in many many places in Europe, people don't need to drive to the grocery store.
Awesomely informative, thank you
3:05 these kinds of videos really gotta have a big 'murica disclaimer. I don't think i've ever driven to a grocery store that wasn't right on the way.
Right but, what about the meal kits that leave out certain ingredients such as the protein or oil or seasoning? For those you’d have to drive to the store and buy those ingredients anyway, meaning not only are you creating more emissions, but you’re also ordering food at a much more marked up price, while still causing all that waste. It would’ve been easier to just get the some groceries at the same store. I think the best instance for these boxes are for when they include everything, and you have a busy lifestyle, like working or staying at home to look after kids/grandparents. Then it takes care of the time and money of grocery shopping and makes it easier to handle
It's because of food waste that I try *not* to buy more fresh fruit and veggies than I will actually use. I really like frozen vegetables, because they last for a long time and I don't have to worry about them going bad on me too quickly. The last-mile trip isn't a problem with me--I don't have a car and bike everywhere. My biggest problem is getting frozen and refrigerated foods home in a timely manner, and occasionally worrying about breaking the eggs on the trip home.
Good breakdown, thanks for researching the subject. As you've pointed out emission is not the only factor and I'm interested to know if other data would show a similar breakdown (maybe a series, hint, hint). I think people in shops also pack their food in a lot of unnecessary bags. I think food waste is something we should educate people the most about. Even with the research I think for me the amount of packaging is a huge deterrent, since everything is packaged. I've used prepped meals and even with the one tray it was too uncomfortable for me.
On the other hand it seems very US specific, since here in Poland I'd say most people walk to the stores, at least in cities. The only people I see in cars is people shopping on their way from work and maybe on weekends for a big party. I think it's because we have less of the huge stores and more smaller neighbourhood supermarkets, with underground car parks, so the time it takes to park there makes most people choose to go on foot.
Also here open air markets are a common place, so people buy a lot of groceries - especially veggies - from local farms and I think shipping is also a huge factor. I haven't read any studies, but I'd say supermarket vs meal kits would be 1:1 in this area meaning they'd be obtaining the products from the same places, but that's only my conjecture.
I was just suggesting this to be true recently! So interesting to see someone who did the background research finding it out!
Yeah . . . the equation is very different for my situation, I think. I'm almost a mile from the grocery store. I very often walk there, then get a ride back from someone who is going less than 2 miles total out of their way. I am in a tiny town that is a little over 100 miles from the closest FedEx / UPS depot, so they do a 200+ mile round trip to my town daily. Sure, I could be just another package recipient since they're here already, right? Well, no, because packages are routinely delayed by a day because they couldn't get delivered during the delivery person's shift, which means the stuff gets driven back down to the depot and back up the next day. That may not happen to my special refrigerated package, but it would happen to somebody else's stuff in its place. And I suppose I wouldn't be adding a whole new delivery trip myself, but if lots of people in my community got meal kits on the regular, there would have to be additional trips / truck segments / whatever. Either way though, there's a cost to driving every pound of stuff, and my meal kit would be at least weight * 100 miles driven.
Meanwhile, the local co-op gets one big truck of fresh food per week. And I really like having a local co-op, life would be noticeably worse here if we only had the two supermarkets, or only one. That's a real risk if the locals don't shop at the local food stores.
Really loved the video and I agree with the conclusion, keep out the good work !
However I spotted a part that seemed misleading to me. All that follows will be hypotheses, not facts, but I believe it's worth writing and debating further.
Around 2:35, you talked about food getting tossed away because they weren't good looking (represented by a big green arrow). But you presented meal kits (around 2:50, with a dotted arrow) as having little of this problem. But this is the same problem one step bellow : meal kits won't select foods that doesn't look good.
However this argument doesn't prove the impact of this "green arrow", the impact of bad looking food is the same in groceries or in meal kits, differences might be : choosing food producers that are more careful with their products or managing shelf time better.
Note that those improvements can be adopted from both grocery stores and meal kits. The huge difference between them is that grocery stores serve a lot of people and can be less careful about shelf time management, but meal kits, having fewer consumers, can put more attention to this sort of things. What would meal kits corps would do if they had a lot more of consumers ? Would they be as careful as to pick their food producers ?
Plus, while in grocery stores some people would not mind a bit damaged products (and so they can be picked up, even if in reality that is a small amount) or offer discounts (maybe more effective), meal kits have to deliver good quality products to every consumer because they won't take the risk of making some consumer angry and canceling their subscription.
In conclusion I find this part with the green arrow is misleading because grocery stores and meal kits don't operate at the same scale. Meal kits have time to be careful about waste because the number of consumers is incomparable with grocery stores. And for now, meal kits have an advantage on this point but I think as they grow up in consumers we should be careful that they don't go careless and, in fine, pollute more than grocery stores. We must keep educating ourselves about this sort of stuff and make the best choices. And this is exactly what you are doing with those videos, so thank you for this !
And again, great video and I learned a lot. Hooray to you !
The big issue I have with the argument at 1:26 (green house gas as estimate of sustainability) is that it often is used as an excuse to gloss over the other less calculable but equally important environmental factors. Take packaging waste for example: carbon emission is not really the only issue with them, but there's also pollution and plastic waste that's not accounted for if you just calculate emissions. You see this over and over again in discussions like plastic bags vs reusable bags where proponents of plastic bags say it doesn't generate much CO2 anyway. I mean sure, but that's not the issue with them to begin with.
I guess I also feel like the issue with averages also shouldn't be a footnote, as it's literally the central thesis of the argument. If you live in a city and walk to the grocery store, then the single biggest reason why meal kits are more environmental friendly vanishes. The meal kit vs grocery store issue actually becomes a proxy for urban vs suburban vs rural which is the real driver for the difference in emissions for the last mile, where I imagine living in a suburban area emit more CO2 regardless of meal kit or grocery store compared to an urban lifestyle (not saying one is right or wrong, just that it emits more CO2).
I wonder how much emissions food waste really is at each step. I know the studies you referenced followed through with the assumption that "unpretty" but edible produce gets tossed and wasted, but that's not necessarily true and *can't* be true for farmers trying to maintain their livelihoods financially. Ingredients for processed foods and drinks don't have to look pretty!
A lot of stores do still toss close-to-expiration foods, unfortunately. :( Some do donate to local daily meal handouts but it still feels so few and far between.
With my nearest value "everything" store 2 minutes away on foot, it makes little sense for me to get deliveries lol. I've already done the reading and it does turn out, for most people in Europe it makes more sense to go to your local supermarket rather than get a delivery. That is unless you have a bad habit of wasting food! I feel bad if I waste a couple of slices of bread a month, whereas I unfortunately imagine many more fortunate Americans wouldn't think twice about throwing a loaf away.