There’s no shortage of reasons why Canadians love their Goodfood meal kits: from the convenience of skipping the chore of meal planning and grocery shopping to the panoply of delicious, healthful options every week, what’s not to love?
Well, in case you needed one more reason, according to a recent study from the journal of Resources, Conservation and Recycling, it turns out meal kits have a smaller carbon footprint than grocery shopping!
While meal kits often get a bad rap for their packaging, it should be noted that all packaging in your Goodfood box is entirely recyclable. In fact, many Goodfoodies reuse their twist cap containers and resealable bags a couple of times before recycling them, further reducing unnecessary waste!
Beyond packaging however, it’s important to look at the other elements that make up the larger environmental picture, namely those of greenhouse gas emissions from food waste and transportation.
According to the United Nation Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), if global food waste was a country, it would be the #3 global greenhouse gas emitter after China and the United States. Food waste affects the environment in a few ways. Food production adds greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, and producing excess food uses unnecessary crop land, water and fertilizer.
Earlier this year in January, Second Harvest, an agency that works to reduce food waste reported that a whopping 58% of all food produced in Canada is lost or wasted with much of it being preventable at the consumer level. Overshopping or poor meal planning often means that unused or expired food ends up in millions of trash cans across the country. As food rots in landfills, it produces more of the greenhouse gas methane, which is 25 times more damaging to our atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
Meal kits significantly cut down on food waste because each ingredient is perfectly measured at peak freshness and pre-portioned, so you won’t end up throwing away two thirds of that bunch of celery you thought you’d find another use for.
The other big element to consider is that of food transportation. With Goodfood, ingredients are transported in bulk by a delivery truck on an optimized route. This means literally millions of individual car trips to grocery stores are saved every year further reducing emissions and the bane of our collective existence, traffic!
While this is all well and good, there is always room for improvement, and Goodfood CEO & Co-founder, Jonathan Ferrari hints at what’s in store on the sustainability front:
“Reducing food waste was an important part of our mission when we founded Goodfood almost 5 years ago, and it’s still very much at the heart of what we do today. That being said, we have made some big commitments to improving our sustainability, in fact biodegradable packaging is one of the next projects we plan to focus on. One day, we even envision delivering Goodfood boxes in electric vehicles!”
In Jonathan’s mind, a lot is at stake — not just for the environment but for the future of Goodfood as well:
“We will not be successful as a business if we are not successful in our sustainability initiatives. Our members are asking for it, and our team is excited to tackle these challenges. We listen very closely to the feedback of our big family of Goodfood members and work hard to make our service just a little bit better every single day — and our sustainability efforts are a vital part of this mentality. As the market leader, we want to set the standard for our entire industry.”
It’s certainly no small feat, but when businesses and consumers come together to collaborate on reducing, reusing and recycling, the future starts to look a lot brighter!
Do you have comments or suggestions? We’d love to hear them. Email us at chef@makegoodfood.ca