Hello Fresh and Sustainability: How Your Food Box Helps The Environment

Hello Fresh promises to help its customers save time. Plus it can support customers to eat better - both in terms of taste and health. However, another way it supports customers is by helping them eat more sustainably, reducing food waste and their carbon footprint. Not all companies can say the same. Many don’t adopt the most sustainable practices in all areas of their business.

That’s where Hello Fresh is different from Hello Fresh alternatives . It takes a multi-pronged approach to acting ethically and sustainably throughout its entire supply chain. Here, we look at how it does that exactly.

The ways a Hello Fresh food box is sustainable

If you are not sold on Hello Fresh, and are looking for something **similar to Hello Fresh **instead, ask yourself whether your potential food box delivery company offers all of the below. Some meal kit companies like Hello Fresh may offer some of these practices, which is great. But it won’t necessarily offer all of them.

More food makes it to your plate

When any food waste goes to landfill as opposed to being eaten, it’s a waste of energy which impacts the climate by producing unnecessary greenhouse gases. In fact, in the UK alone, households waste a massive 4.5 million tonnes of food every single year. That’s where Hello Fresh comes in - it helps you reduce food waste by only buying ingredients based on your order with ingredients coming pre-portioned - right to the gram.

While HelloFresh may seem more expensive at first, you always use every single ingredient and part of a Hello Fresh box - which can’t be said of a traditional supermarket shop.

Directly sourced from suppliers

A crucial way that HelloFresh US manages to help minimise the impact of food production on the planet, is by going direct to suppliers for orders. It means that it reduces the journey, and the number of stops, that food has to go on - saving CO2 emissions. Not all Hello Fresh alternatives can say that, so it’s good to look at how long a journey your food has gone on before it makes it to your plate. Reducing the distance it has had to travel is a great way of achieving lower carbon emissions and therefore a smaller environmental footprint.

Clever packaging

Companies that offer similar products to HelloFresh aren’t normally anywhere close when it comes to clever packaging. Keeping food fresh is of paramount importance, but that often comes at the expense of the environment. Single use plastic packaging is usually what are used to transport food, but they’re infamous now for ending up in our oceans or landfill - never to decompose safely in our lifetime.

Hello Fresh tries to optimise their sustainable packaging. Their production facilities have already switched to fully recyclable and FSC®-certified paper sachets for dry ingredients like pasta and grains. They’ve also developed an algorithm that determines the optimal amount of packaging for each unique order, helping them avoid unnecessary packaging. Finally, they’ve introduced more recyclable packaging sauce sachets.

Seasonal produce

One of the reasons that food production is so guilty of pushing up global carbon emissions is “force growing” food that isn't in season. Force growing takes more energy, and ultimately ends up producing food that isn’t actually as good for you as something that is grown when it is in season. It also increases the amount of harmful chemicals in our food production cycle, when we should be keeping those to a minimum - to soften their impact on the planet and our bodies.

To offset this issue, HelloFresh sources freshly grown, in season food for its recipes.

Climate Conscious recipes

One of the latest initiatives that Hello Fresh has started is to introduce climate conscious recipes to their meals list each week. It means that customers can make an informed decision as to whether they want to choose a meal based on taste plus the amount of carbon that was produced to grow and cultivate the ingredients required.

Climate conscious recipes from Hello Fresh are the ones that are responsible for the lowest amount of greenhouse gas emissions on the weekly menu, and produce at least 50% less carbon emissions than the average Hello Fresh meal. All customers have to do is look out for the special climate conscious tags on the meals list each week.

Hello Fresh and the community

Hello Fresh works with local communities, alongside Social Farms & Gardens, so that people can learn to grow fruit, vegetables and flowers more sustainably. They also works with JB Gill, Farming and Gardening Advocate, to promote more sustainable kitchen habits in UK homes.

Hello Fresh donations

One of the biggest plus points for Hello Fresh, and how it helps the wider community, is through its charitable partnerships. Currently, they work with the London-based charity The Felix Project.

The charity seeks to fight hunger by reusing surplus food that is still fresh and nutritious. The charity then goes on to deliver it to other charities or schools for people in need. It means that if there is any surplus food at a Hello Fresh packing facility, that it’s given to those who need it most - further reducing food waste in addition to helping stamp out food poverty.

Certified animal welfare

Some people may choose to become Vegan or Vegetarian in their fight to ensure livestock is treated well. However, if you don’t want to give up meat altogether, let alone items like milk, cheese or eggs, you can choose to buy meat and animal produce that meets certified standards that ensure higher animal welfare.

Hello Fresh helps you do this as all the beef, chicken, turkey, duck and pork meats included in food boxes are all Red Tractor Assured. Red Tractor certified meat has been cared for on farms that meet rigorous standards with regards to food safety, traceability, animal welfare and environmental protection.

What's more, Hello Fresh is one of 800 UK companies that deliver meat that was born, reared, processed and packed in the UK, so you know exactly where it is coming from.

B Corp Company

Hello Fresh is an environmentally friendly company, being given the hard to attain B Corp designation. It means that Hello Fresh is one of 4000 companies that have met the highest standards of social and environmental impact - through accountability and transparency.

Why targeting sustainability through Hello Fresh is important

Hello Fresh has committed to offsetting 100% of its direct greenhouse gas emissions, making them the first global carbon-neutral meal company. **Hello Fresh alternatives **often assert their environmental credentials along the lines of ‘reduce your food waste’ or ‘only eat what you need’. While that’s great, it’s even more encouraging to see companies like Hello Fresh flexing their muscles on more sustainable fronts.

All of the above efforts, which minimise the impact of food production, food delivery and food consumption, add up to a big impact on sustainability. The more people use Hello Fresh, as opposed to companies similar to Hello Fresh , the bigger the environmental gain.