Is getting food delivered worse for the climate? Sometimes it’s better

Climate change is affecting our food, and our food is affecting the climate. NPR is dedicating a week to stories and conversations about the search for solutions.

There’s a whiteboard on the refrigerator in the du Plessises’ kitchen that the couple uses to plan dinners for the week — what to make and who will do the cooking. But with two young children, full-time jobs and the nearest supermarket 20 minutes away, figuring out what to eat sometimes feels like a chore.

To lighten the load, Micaeli and Gerhard du Plessis regularly use a grocery delivery service. They’ve also tried prepackaged meal kits and they get takeout delivered to their suburban Washington, D.C., home about once a week.

“Obviously, we'd rather be able to go out and buy fresh stuff every day, but that's not realistic right now,” Micaeli says, as she holds her youngest, Eva, in a baby sling and unpacks boxes that have just arrived by Instacart. “With two little kids … at Costco, it's just a really unpleasant experience. So I'd much prefer to pay someone a few extra dollars to just deliver it for us.”

America’s appetite for online grocery sales soared more than 50% during the COVID-19 pandemic, from $62 billion in 2019 to $96 billion in 2020, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. One in five consumers now has groceries delivered to their door at least once a month. By 2029, Statista estimates, the market will be worth $455 billion.

Meanwhile, there’s been a steep increase in demand for restaurant takeout via such services as DoorDash and Uber Eats. Meal kits like HelloFresh and Home Chef, which come with premeasured ingredients, are also experiencing strong growth.

At the same time, food production and transportation make up as much as one-third of a typical U.S. household’s annual contribution to climate change-inducing emissions. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that 30% of food produced in the U.S. is wasted. And once in landfills, rotting food creates methane — a potent gas that heats the Earth. So, changing consumer behavior to minimize waste and reduce transportation could have a significant impact on the overall pollution that is fueling climate change.

“It’s crossed my mind,” Micaeli says about the environmental impact. “Unfortunately, it's one of those things like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It's like we have to meet our basic needs before we can be concerned about things like that.”

In 2022, researchers from the University of Michigan and Ford Motor Co. modeled a single 36-item grocery cart to compare greenhouse emissions from an e-commerce grocery delivery and a traditional trip to the store to get the same items. Gregory Keoleian and colleagues at the university's Center for Sustainable Systems found that using an electric vehicle to pick up groceries could cut emissions by as much as half, compared to a gas-powered vehicle.

They also found that home delivery could be an even better option. That’s because with a delivery vehicle, orders are often clustered, with a driver dropping off not just your groceries, but also hitting neighbors during the same run. “Delivery is actually going to be more efficient in general than driving yourself in a gasoline SUV to the store to pick up your groceries,” Keoleian says.

Meal kits versus cooking from scratch

In Sonora, Calif., Scott Jones, his wife and elderly father have made extensive use of HelloFresh. One of the company’s meal kits that is designed to feed two people works out “absolutely perfect [with] very little waste” for the three of them, he says. He’s also impressed with the packaging, much of which is compostable or recyclable.

Still, he’s a bit worried about the size of the carbon footprint such meal kits might produce, a concern echoed by the du Plessis family.

“I think the worst would probably be the meal kits,” Micaeli says. “Yeah, with all that packaging,” her husband, Gerhard, agrees.

In fact, a 2019 study found that, comparatively, meal kits could be one of the best options for lower greenhouse gas emissions. Shelie Miller and a group of researchers from the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability compared the carbon footprint of meal kits with the same recipes sourced from a grocery store. She and her colleagues looked at emissions for each meal caused by food waste and packaging, and the supply chain structure.

The meal kits “did have more packaging overall and more impact associated with that packaging,” Miller says. “But what we really saw was that the meal kits had more efficient use of food.”

On average, the greenhouse gas emissions for a meal made with ingredients purchased at a grocery store are 33% higher than a comparable prepackaged kit, the study found.

The reason? When we cook from scratch, we tend to buy more ingredients than we need. Some of that goes to waste, Miller says. And leftovers get shoved to the back of the refrigerator and forgotten.

Case in point: At the du Plessis household, Gerhard says finishing up leftovers is a “50-50” proposition. “If you want to look in the fridge, there's just Tupperware full of leftovers from last night and the night before” that might never get eaten, he says.

But shopping at a farmers market can help offset the carbon footprint of cooking from scratch, says Jury Gualandris, a professor at Western University’s Ivey Business School in Ontario, Canada, who studies food waste in supply chains. In one research paper, he and co-author Sourabh Jain consider the sustainability of individual consumer choices at a supermarket or farmers market compared to those made by a meal kit provider.

“When you cook your own meal, if you do it by sourcing materials that are grown locally, then you will cut the carbon footprint by a substantial amount …” Gualandris says.

E-bikes, drones and robots deliver a smaller carbon footprint

When it comes to delivery services like DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub, Gerhard du Plessis theorizes that “because this guy's literally delivering two burgers and like two sodas,” such options would have a big footprint. “For the volume of food compared to the amount of carbon emitted, yeah, the equation doesn't quite add up.”

Unlike grocery deliveries, it’s difficult to coordinate multiple drop-offs in a single vehicle, according to William Rose, an associate professor of supply chain management at Iowa State University.

A driver typically picks up an order quickly and, in the case of takeout food, ideally gets it to the customer while it’s still hot, Rose says. It becomes “impossible to cluster those deliveries,” he says — unless people who live near each other decide at the same time to order from the same restaurant or eateries within close proximity.

But there are ways to reduce the heavier carbon footprint even for this type of delivery.

E-bikes can save a lot on emissions and they are substantially cheaper to operate compared to automobiles. Keoleian says the study he worked on also looked at emerging technologies such as drones and sidewalk robots, finding that they could significantly reduce carbon emissions on small deliveries, such as restaurant takeout.

But he is quick to point out that the “last mile” of a delivery accounts for only about 10% of the greenhouse gases in the food supply chain. A much bigger factor is the type of food we eat, and “about a quarter to a third of the emissions are due to the food waste.”

Key takeaways for ordinary consumers

For any type of delivery, sedans are better than SUVs, which are better than pickup trucks, Keoleian says. Bundling a grocery run with other errands or the work commute is another good strategy to reduce your footprint.

But these options aren't for everyone. Meal kits and food delivery can be more expensive and aren’t affordable for everyone. And yet, they can also be indispensable.

It wasn’t the pandemic but a serious accident that changed Halima Jenkins’ shopping habits. About a decade ago, she fell down a flight of stairs and now, she says, “I have days where I can't drive. I have days where I can't move.”

Her daughters don’t drive yet, and her husband doesn’t always have time to shop. So grocery delivery has become the norm in their Hyattsville, Md., home. The family also gets restaurant food delivered by DoorDash or Uber Eats once or twice a week.

“There are days where I just feel like existing is profoundly difficult,” Jenkins says. “I'm happy to just have something delivered depending on how capable I am that day.”

So, what are the simple takeaways for ordinary consumers?

If meal kits fit your lifestyle, they may be the most climate-conscious choice. The packaging might put you off, but you’re less likely to waste food.

When it comes to groceries, delivery via a service like Instacart may be a better option for the environment compared to driving to the store, unless you can bundle grocery runs with your work commute or other errands.

Limiting restaurant takeout via DoorDash or Uber Eats also will help reduce your carbon footprint. But with these services, the mode of delivery makes a difference. In a busy city, where the driver uses an e-bike or electric car, the footprint of the service will be significantly less than a meal brought to you in a gasoline-powered vehicle.