Often blamed for the large amount of packaging they generate, companies that deliver ready-to-cook meal boxes are trying to improve their environmental record. According to experts in waste reduction, however, they still have a lot to do to seriously reduce their ecological footprint.
Montreal’s Cook it will be testing a new reusable cooler starting April 29. Its customers, like those at Hello Fresh and Goodfood, receive their food in a cardboard box lined with insulation. Inside is the exact amount of ingredients needed to make at least two recipes, packed in plastic or paper bags, along with a single-use ice pack.
However, in the coming weeks, up to 200 consumers will switch to a black box made of expanded polypropylene, which looks like compressed styrofoam.
“It’s super durable. We did tests by throwing the boxes and we couldn’t break any,” enthuses the president of Cook it, Judith Fetzer. The material was also chosen for its insulating properties and its recyclability.
The delivery people will pick up the coolers and reusable ice packs during the next delivery. Mme Fetzer believes that this way of doing things could not only be more environmentally friendly, but also more economical for the company than continually producing new cardboard boxes.
This is currently a pilot project. Cook it hopes to deploy these boxes on a large scale as early as 2023, with the hope that around 25% of customers will quickly adhere to them, especially in urban centers such as Montreal, Quebec and Toronto. Damaged or end-of-life containers must be returned to the manufacturer, Polymos, located in Terrasse-Vaudreuil, for recycling.
The contents of the boxes, which include a lot of packaging, will not change for the moment, however. With the advent of the pandemic, Cook it has also dropped a pilot project started in 2018, in which all the ingredients were packaged in reusable containers.
“We had so much growth that it became hard to manage. The interior of a set to cook, it’s 40 ingredients on average. It was difficult to expand,” explains M.me Fetzer, who believes his business reduces food waste.
For its part, Goodfood had launched a reusable box in 2019, but abandoned it because “the management of it was not efficient on the customer side or internally,” the company said by email. Instead, it is said to focus on reducing the amount of packaging, which is also “made from recycled materials and is fully recyclable”. Its new 30-minute delivery service uses only brown paper bags, it is said.
Hello Fresh, meanwhile, is not planning to introduce reusable boxes. The company, however, said via email that it is also working to use less packaging and make the majority of it recyclable.
Still a lot of waste
The introduction of a reusable box remains a “modest” step forward if we take into account the amount of single-use packaging that will remain inside, notes Amélie Côté, source reduction analyst at Équiterre. “Are there any solutions envisaged to avoid putting such small quantities of products in containers? she asks. We sometimes talk about a teaspoon of spices or 50 ml of olive oil. »
Even if the packaging is often recyclable in theory, this will not always be the case if it is soiled or if customers are not well informed of what is recyclable in their municipality, also believes Ms.me Side.
Furthermore, the environmental benefit of the cooler will also depend on the number of times it is used in relation to the impact of its production and the production of cardboard boxes. “Reusable bags must be used at least 200 times for it to be equivalent to a disposable bag,” recalls Karel Ménard, director general of the Quebec Common Front for ecological waste management. The latter points out that home delivery also generally results in greenhouse gas emissions.
Mme Côté says he expects several green marketing announcements in the wake of Earth Day, April 22. It nevertheless encourages businesses and citizens to accelerate a transition to the use of reusable containers for the purchase of food, which would be essential in the face of the environmental emergency.