Subscription meal kits like Blue Apron and HelloFresh, which deliver portioned ingredients and recipes for making meals, were once touted as the future of food. But so far, they haven’t lived up to that hype: In recent years, many top brands have had financial problems and disappointing sign-up rates. While many customers balk at the cost, others avoid meal kits because of the perceived environmental impact of all that extra packaging. But a new study published in the journal Resources, Conservation and Recycling may assuage some customers’ guilt; it finds that the average meal sourced from a grocery store is responsible for 33% more greenhouse gas emissions than an equivalent dish from a meal kit. According to scientists from the University of Michigan, certain benefits from meal kits canceled out the excessive packaging that comes with subscription services. One example is that meal kits significantly cut down on food waste because each ingredient was precisely measured. Another benefit is that it’s more environmentally friendly for a delivery truck, which is filled with other packages and driving an optimized route, to deliver food to consumers’ doorsteps, rather than having each person make an independent trip to the grocery store. Now if meal kits could clean up their packaging a bit, they could offer an even greener option for people trying to reduce the carbon footprint of their meals.
Meal kit subscriptions have more benefits for the environment than you think
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