Despite more packaging, meal kits are greener than groceries, study suggests

By Brendan Pietrobon · CBC News

Meal made with groceries produced 33% more greenhouse gas than one from a kit

Image: HelloFresh/Associated Press

Meal kits performed better than grocery stores in a number of ways, such as producing less food waste and greenhouse gas from transportation.

Meal kits like HelloFresh come to your door as a box or bag full of plastic-wrapped ingredients. But while it may look wasteful, a new study suggests home-delivered meal kits might actually be better for the environment than buying food for dinner from a grocery store.

Many ingredients in a meal kit are individually packaged — sauces and spices come in plastic packets — which creates a fair amount of plastic waste, plus the cardboard boxes used to deliver them.

Shelie Miller, associate professor at the University of Michigan's Center for Sustainable Systems and senior author of the paper published in the journal Resources, Conservation and Recycling, said she was motivated to study the kits because of comments from friends about how wasteful they thought the packaging was.

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