Which is The Most Eco-Friendly Recipe Box?

When I had a full time job, and less spare time, I used a recipe box home delivery service quite regularly. I didn’t subscribe as such because I lived alone and didn’t necessarily want that much food delivered every week, potentially wasting it. But when they had recipes that I really wanted to try out I would make sure I had a couple of meals sorted (they’re designed for 2 people normally, so 2 recipes would feed me for 4 nights of the week.) I stopped ordering them because of the amount of plastic packaging, which didn’t sit well with me. But have things changed over the last 5 years? Is it even possible to get an eco-friendly recipe box delivered?

Eco-Friendly Recipe Box – Does it exist?

Recipe Boxes…

• Reduce food waste
• Reduce your carbon footprint

Any recipe box, or meal kit, helps to reduce food waste, so this has not been specifically mentioned when looking into each of the recipe boxes listed below. Having recipe boxes delivered also reduces your carbon footprint compared to shopping at supermarkets. Gousto claim that having their boxes delivered reduces your carbon footprint by 23%, HelloFresh claim this figure to be 25%. How does this reduce your carbon footprint? Food is ordered directly from the supplier, rather than stopping at warehouses and then supermarkets, this reduces the amount of miles your food has travelled before getting to you.

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Let’s have a look at some of the most popular recipe boxes in the UK, starting with Gousto because that’s the company I used to order from.

Please note that almost every recipe box service offers a discount for the first box, so check their website for any voucher code to use when checking out.

Gousto

I used to order from Gousto because the food was really good and the recipe cards were easy to follow. Over time I realised just how much plastic was contained in the recipe box because they send you the exact amount of ingredients you need in individual packages. You’d even be sent a miniature pot of mayonnaise. Looking into them now I can see that they offer even more recipes every week to choose from. There are 250 recipes a month, with at least 28 being vegetarian and at least 10 being vegan, which is great to see. You can order a minimum of 2 meals per week (each meal is for 2 people). But the reason I stopped ordering from them was the amount of plastic they used. So have they made any improvements?

Sustainability

When researching a company the first thing I do is look for a sustainability page, and Gousto do have one, however it links to all their blogs which have been tagged with ‘sustainability’. Unfortunately the majority of the blogs are tips for how people can save water, or reduce food waste and not about what Gousto themselves are doing to be more sustainable. They have blogged about “Meet The Eco Chill Box”, “We’ve solved our 50% plastic pledge” and one called “Sustainable Recipe Box”.

Having said that, before the blogs they do announce that they are now Certified B Corp™.

How eco-friendly are Gousto recipe boxes?

• B Corp Certified (see below).
• They’ve reduced plastic by…
  • Using Eco Chill Boxes (explained below).
  • Swapping plastic punnets with cardboard punnets for tomatoes and mushrooms.
  • Sauce sachets now use 50% plastic and herb sachets 25% less plastic for the same amount of product.
  • Many vegetables are now left loose in the box
  • Eggs are packaged using recycled cardboard boxes. (They used to come wrapped in kitchen roll in a plastic container).
  • They no longer send individual mayonnaise sachets. You’ll now be sent one sachet with all the mayonnaise you need.
  • No more black plastic (which can’t be recycled).
• 72% of the Gousto branded packaging is now recyclable.
• Better packaging = fewer lorry journey’s.
• Edible stock cube packaging!
• Sustainable printing.

B Corp™

B Corp certification measures “a company’s entire social and environmental impact.” To get the certification, Gousto states that one Gousto box per week could reduce your carbon footprint by 23% compared to shopping at a supermarket. This reduction is due to the planning and portioning of ingredients to reduce food waste within their factories, and your home. They try to source British meat and produce as much as possible, thereby reducing the carbon footprint of the produce being delivered.

Any undelivered food is given to those who need it, such as Fareshare. And they’re making sure everyone in their supply chain signs up to a strict code of conduct.

What’s the Eco Chill Box?

This I’m very happy to see. It was pretty inevitable that in almost all recipe boxes there were some items that needed to be kept chilled (maybe not so much in their vegan boxes but I wasn’t vegan when I used to order from them). To keep things cold a fair bit of plastic packaging was used. The Eco Chill Box has replaced this with a 100% recyclable insulator which they say will remove 74.5 tonnes of plastic from their boxes. This is a huge step in the right direction.

Order Gousto

HelloFresh

This might be the most well known of all the recipe boxes, and was possibly the first one to appear (I’m not 100% sure to be honest). They have at least 7 ‘veggie’ options but unfortunately you can’t see what the options are for that week before you sign up. It does seem as though they do have plenty of dairy and egg free recipes, but there’s no guarantee how many vegan / plant based options there are each week. You have to order a minimum of 3 meals per week and each meal is for 2 people.

Sustainability

HelloFresh do have a sustainability page, which used to be quite difficult to find but is now found in the main menu. On it they discuss food waste, shorter supply chains, CO2 emissions, their packaging, regional and seasonal produce and sustainable agriculture, fishing, and animal farming. My favourite thing – ‘climate conscious recipes’. All good so far.

How eco-friendly are HelloFresh recipe boxes?

• Carbon neutral company
• Reducing transport time by cutting out retailers and warehouses
• Fully recyclable and paper packaging for all dry ingredients
• More recyclable sauce sachets
• Avoiding, reducing and recycling packaging whereever possible
• HelloFresh sponsors a sustainable recycling project
• ‘Climate Conscious’ recipes which ‘produce at least 2/3 less carbon emissions than the average HelloFresh meal.’
• A really transparent and in depth non-financial report with a big focus on sustainability.

Saving CO2

HelloFresh order the ingredients directly from suppliers so that your groceries are delivered straight to your door without stopping at warehouses and retailers. This reduces transport time and extra storage. They claim to be the first global carbon-neutral meal kit company as they offset 100% of their direct CO2 emissions.

Order HelloFresh

Riverford Organic Farmers

In theory Riverford, being organic, sounds like it should be the most eco-friendly recipe box available. The first thing I notice is when they mention the options for their recipe boxes the vegan and vegetarian boxes are the first ones listed, when normally these options are added as after-thoughts (you don’t want to upset the meat-eaters who hate vegans!). The second thing I really like about Riverford is that you can choose to have just one recipe delivered. As with all the other companies, the meal is designed for 2 people.

You can also buy organic seasonal fruit and veg boxes, without recipes, from Riverford.

Sustainability

When you hover over ‘About Riverford’ in the main menu you then have 7 further menu options. The first option is ‘ethics and ethos’, the second is ‘Get fair about farming’ and the third is ‘planet’ which includes a link to their sustainability report.

The dropdown menu available under ethics and ethos also goes into aspects of their eco-friendliness. Riverford really are taking sustainability and ethics very seriously!

How eco-friendly are Riverford Organic Farmers recipe boxes?

• B Corp Certified.
• Everything grown and produced at Riverford is 100% organic. Organic farming…
  • Protects natural resources, such as fresh water and healthy soils
  • Encourages wildlife; there is up to 50% more wildlife on organic farms
  • Avoids pollution from artificial chemicals
  • Uses less energy per kg of food produced
  • Captures CO2 emissions in the soil through ‘carbon sequestration’
• Reducing packaging wherever possible.
• If packaging is needed, all fruit and veg packaging is paper or home compostable*.
• They collect their packaging for reuse, recycling or composting.
• The reusable boxes are made from 98% recycled materials, and are 100% recyclable and can be reused up to 10 times.
• Sustainability report.
• Aim to reach net zero by 2030.
• They plant trees.
• 80% of their veg is UK grown. 100% of their meat is British. (They also offer 100% UK grown seasonal veg boxes).
• 11% of their vans are electric and they say all of their delivery vans will be electric by 2025.
• They have a biodiversity action plan.
• and so much more…

* Home compostable – “Once disposed of, these super sustainable materials disintegrate into pieces smaller than 2mm within six months, and properly biodegrade (breaking down not into microplastics, but into carbon dioxide, water vapour and organic matter, just like a plant decomposing) within a year. They break down like this even in low temperatures, such as your home compost heap.”

Order Riverford

Mindful Chef

With a name like Mindful Chef, I’m expecting good things from this recipe box company. Supposedly the UK’s highest rated recipe box, they’ve sold over 30 million meals to over 380,000 people. You can choose from 20 or more different recipes each week and choose recipe boxes for just 1 person, as well as 2 people. If you’re ordering for 1 person you have to pick between 3 and 5 recipes. (For 2 people 2 to 5 recipes, and for 4 people 2 to 3 recipes.) You can choose to filter the meals for ‘Meat and fish’, ‘pescetarian’ or ‘vegan’. Under the vegan option there are 6 options.

Sustainability

Their sustainability information isn’t actually that easy to find. In the footer links of their web page you can find more information, but no page specifically named sustainability or similar. Mindful Chef do have a page on ‘recycling’ as well as talking about the recycled denim they use as insulation to keep products cool. The insulation and ice packs they use can be reused or returned to them. The pots, craft bags and boxes can all be recycled.

They’re a very transparent company and publish an Annual Sustainability Report on their website, although you do have to click on the B Corp link in the footer to find this report.

How eco-friendly are Mindful Chef recipe boxes?

• B Corp Certified.
• Low carbon range – meals with a much lower carbon footprint.
• An aim to be net zero by 2030.
• Mostly recyclable packaging.
• 100% British meat.
• Carbon neutral deliveries.
• Annual Carbon report.
• Every meal bought also donates one to a child in poverty.

No longer organic?

Mindful Chef used to be 100% organic, however so they could scale the business, and have a more consistent supply of produce they no longer are organic. Instead they ‘work with British farms that don’t rely on chemical pesticides – using traditional crop-rotation techniques, and for meat, using non-intensive outdoor farming methods so antibiotics are not required’.

Order Mindful Chef

If you’re trying to live a completely plastic free lifestyle, most recipe boxes wouldn’t be suitable for you. The 4 recipe boxes mentioned in this article are at least trying to reduce their use of plastic packaging, and other packaging, as much as they can. The good news is that all 4 companies I’ve looked at appear to be moving in the right direction.

Most Eco-Friendly Recipe Box

B Corps commit to positively impact all stakeholders – workers, communities, customers, and our planet. A minimum ‘score’ of 80 is required to become certified.

If you search the B Corp website HelloFresh does have a B Corp score of 83.8, however this includes other parts of their business such as ‘Green Chef’. They also don’t mention B Corp certification on the HelloFresh website so that’s why I haven’t included their score below.

Based on my criteria…

1. Riverford Organic Farmers
2. Mindful Chef
3. Gousto
4. Hello Fresh

Riverford are in the top position but are closely followed by Mindful Chef. Riverford gets the top spot for their high score for B Corp certification, being 100% organic, and also because their whole website talks about their ethics and sustainable practises. Where packaging can’t currently be recycled or composted by yourself at home, Riverford will pick it up and reuse it, recycle it or compost it for you.

Recipe Boxes can be very handy for busy households, and there’s also no denying that they help to reduce food waste. If I was to order a recipe box again in the future I’d be looking at Riverford and Mindful Chef to see what recipes they had on offer that week, although I am impressed by how much Gousto has upped their game with their increased focus on sustainability on their website.

Recipe Boxes are similar, but not the same, as subscription boxes, which I have strong feelings about. I believe an eco-friendly subscription box is an oxymoron…

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