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Comment by teen | Hacker News Reader

The amount of pollution / trash this company produces seems pretty counter to their mission statement.

From what I recall when we had it, it was a lot less trash than going to the store and getting everything packaged individually. And I'm sure the shipping is less polluting than having all the customers drive around too.

> From what I recall when we had it, it was a lot less trash than going to the store and getting everything packaged individually.

But all the stuff Blue Apron sends you is individually packaged (down to stuff like a single green onion in a bag)...

For various small bits they send a single brown paper bag (per meal).

Hm, it might actually be worse since they send a small package for each portion of spices etc. instead of me just buying one glass jar and using it for ages. I mean they once sent me a single egg in a big cardboard structure. https://goo.gl/photos/9xDYYQGtba6LPM1Y7 Very biodegradable in this case but still an interesting question.

You can imagine them eventually having an option for "i'll supply eggs, milk, flour" or whatnot, but I can definitely imagine that you'd have an awkward product experience when you figure out you actually don't have any

So what's the greater waste? The cardboard necessary to package one egg, or the other 5 to 11 eggs in your fridge that were thrown out because you didn't use them?

You can buy eggs in packages of six, and they last for weeks.

Maybe the efficiency boost on the production line caused by this kind of packaging saves more energy than what's lost due to the extra material?

Also, there's almost zero food waste (assuming you eat everything) as they provide ingredients in the amounts required by the recipe.

Huh? The trash is a lot more than grocery shopping, because everything (except certain produce items) is still packages individually, and in much smaller containers for "pantry basics" that are used in small amounts in each recipe (vinegars, etc.), Plus there's the insulation and cold packs.

> And I'm sure the shipping is less polluting than having all the customers drive around too.

Grocery delivery is a thing, though.

Almost everything is recyclable.

And there's a different kind of waste that is reduced by BA. Every week my wife and I would have to throw out unused produce that didn't divide evenly into our meals, and it is pretty significant unless you're an expert at meal planning. There is zero food waste with BA...

>it is pretty significant unless you're an expert at meal planning

If you're wasting food that often then perhaps adjustments are necessary.

>There is zero food waste with BA

Is there a citation for that very strong claim? Zero waste would require perfectly timed and sized resource allocation through their entire pipeline.

I'm talking about household food waste.

I see. Well moving the problem from individual homes to a larger organization probably does help, but it's important to be cognizant of the fact that waste is still happening somewhere.

We canceled after a week precisely for this reason. I couldn't believe how much trash a single shipment generated.

what's a single shipment typically composed of? Curious since I was thinking of trying it.

Do you mean like cardboard/plastic packaging? I was thinking materials would come in re-usable container. Not fancy, but even somewhat "cheapy" re-usable material.

From Googling around, lots of plastic bags:

https://www.jennettefulda.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ing...

I haven't used Blue Apron but used one of their competitors and you'd get the ingredients like this but they'd also be in a big styrofoam container (to help insulate against the elements). The other problem was if you had 2 recipes that each called for a cucumber you'd get 2 individually bagged cucumbers. I don't know if they're smarter about this but that was a big turn off when I tried it.

Lots of individual plastic bags, but they are recyclable in the giant plastic bag recycling box at the grocery store. We would just stuff them all into a larger bag for storage and drop it all off next time we actually went to the store.

I hear this a lot from people. When I go grocery shopping I have bags and boxes for nearly everything I purchase. When I order items on Amazon I get boxes and tons of packing materials. What is a better alternative that does not generate tons of trash?

Blue Apron also does a good job at allowing you to send back the materials so they can recycle them. I just point this out as I think they get a lot of criticism for a company that I don't think generates more trash than a lot of alternatives and they give an option to recycle.

Right - but I don't have daily trash for spices. Or for eggs. It's not the fact that they generate trash. It's the frequency and quantity.

> When I go grocery shopping I have bags and boxes for nearly everything I purchase.

You don't get enough cold packs and insulation for it to stay cold for a couple of days in a hot shipping distribution center / truck, though.

Trash is generally a byproduct of convenience, so I'm not surprised to hear this product generates a lot of trash. One can say the same thing about Keurigs, that hilarious Juicero thing, and many other services. I instinctively avoid this kind of thing now, not just because of the quality compromise but also this trash efficiency compromise. It's really short-sighted and lazy to consume in this fashion.

Go to a damn farmer's market and plan out your week, people!

Your accusatory comment assumes that the reader:

* Lives in an area with a farmer's market in accessible range (i.e. they don't live in a food desert[1] like ~24 million Americans - and that's just any kinda real market)

* Spends as much or less at the market as on a service like this, factoring in all externalities such as food waste, travel time and expense, and so on

* Has the time to spend getting to the market and shopping

* Has the cash on hand (many farmers markets are cash only - anyone on SNAP, ~43M people[2], is now excluded since those benefits are usually on cards)

* Has a situation that allows "planning out their week"

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

[2]: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/...

Somehow those people in "food deserts" managed to get by for hundreds of years before this era of wasteful ultra-convenience startups.

They're a fairly recent development.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2516593/

> In 1961, more than 75% of London’s inner-city population lived within 1 kilometer of a supermarket, giving them easy access to a variety of foods, says principal investigator Jason Gilliland, who directs the university’s Urban Development Program. In 2005, he says, that number was less than 20%.

You can ship the boxes, gel packs, and foil bag back to them for recycling. They give you a free shipping label.

https://support.blueapron.com/hc/en-us/articles/202510818-Ho...

doesn't the carbon footprint of shipping it back offset the recycling?

That's a perfectly valid point, above, which definitely should not have been downvoted.

This business about "just ship it back to us and we'll recycle it" is obviously suspect. If anything it sounds like a scheme they came up with so they could check some box in some policy subscription about "offering recycling opportunities at all stages in the supply chain", or something similar. Even though when you think about, it's obviously how wasteful that "recycling" route is.

A loophole, in other words.

they are obviously counting on the fact that their customers are 1. lazy/busy 2. don't care that much about recycling.

It's not that obvious and not so much a loophole. Shipping is more efficient than you give credit for (eg shipping recyclables from UK to China is still net-beneficial as opposed to landfilling [0]), and most likely recycling back to them is advantageous. The gel packs are reusable, you ship them 10 at a time, and "Reuse" is better than "Recycle" in "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle".

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/aug/19/recyclin...

shipping recyclables from UK to China is still net-beneficial as opposed to landfilling

That's shipping it from the local recycling plant, ton for ton. But the "net benefit" of shipping millions of box of crumbled aluminum and plastic wrappers back to Blue Apron (then unpacking and sorting them)? As if anyone has time for that, anyway (when most of us have time to do the dishes and put out the trash)? That's where things start to look suspect.

The gel packs are reusable,

Yeah, like all those soaps and mini-shampoo bottles we steal from hotels and intend to "use" someday, too.

But hey, it sure sounds nice enough as a little green checkbox on some "sustainability architect"'s slide presentation somewhere, I'm sure.

> Yeah, like all those soaps and mini-shampoo bottles we steal from hotels and intend to "use" someday, too.

No -- you ship the gel packs back to Blue Apron and they reuse them. Reuse >> recycling, BTW.

I just did a back of the envelope calc for the carbon footprint of shipping your gel packs back to them (assuming shipping by truck 2,000km). It's about 300 grams of CO2.

A gallon of gasoline puts about 10kg of CO2 in the air. If you were to drive to the supermarket a mile away, just your trip in the car puts 800g of CO2 in the air (assuming 25 mpg).

Something tells me a proper analysis of the net impact of their propose recycling scheme would be a bit more involved than the two numbers you came up with (and leaving aside such questions of how many customers will actually participate; and the fact that having all those gel packs that have been handled by N customers in the past be send in with my food shipments sounds, well, kind of gross).

That is, at the end of the day, it still sounds -- suspect.

No. It is still better to recycle.

While there is an obvious carbon footprint when shipping, don't forget that your box is on a truck with many other boxes. Inside your single returned box are 8-10 completely reusable gel packs from the last 4-5 weeks of meals. Ship back once a month.

Also keep in mind that many supermarket items travel farther than Blue Apron boxes, so if you're concerned about shipping emissions, you have to compare Blue Apron against that un-recycleable Purdue chicken package that probably traveled 3x as far.

The UK did a study about shipping recyclables to China for processing, and even that 10,000 mile journey for recycling had a better carbon footprint than landfilling and remanufacturing.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/aug/19/recyclin...

Do you have evidence that a meal kit produces more "trash" than the packaging required to ship all of the included products to a store? Additionally, your argument is incomplete without addressing the efficiencies that meal kit companies gain by limiting food waste. The real question is what provides a more efficient food system, a grocery store or a meal kit?

I'd love to see a proper study as well. Every argument I've ever seen against these meals in a box services regarding trash, including the ones I've read in this thread, are entirely based on individual personal anecdotes.

Superficially I can see the appeal of arguing based on the packaging you receive, but this fails to account for recycling options, and ignores aspects like the avoidance of food wastage given the precisely measured amounts. There's clearly more to this problem than 'wow that's more cardboard and plastic than I expected'.

Ofc it's going to be anecdotal. But that doesn't mean it's not true. 12 eggs indivially wrapped vs a dozen. 1 green onion in a plastic bag instead of a few in a smaller grocery plastic bag. Individual plastic bottles to hold 3 tablespoons of vinegar.

I'm not arguing it isn't true at all - just saying that anecdotes alone aren't going to prove this one way or another, at least not to my satisfaction.

> Ofc it's going to be anecdotal

Not really. People link to studies/research here frequently in comments.

https://www.jennettefulda.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ing...

I mean just look at this photo... A resealable plastic bag for 1 green onion?

It's packed like an MRE! (Only less ready to eat, and probably much more appetizing.) This is the first I've heard of Blue Apron, but I'm really seeing where the accusations of excessive waste come from.

I agree that these recipe-as-a-service companies have too much packaging, but I wonder if there is more embedded energy in them than the alternatives.

For a lot of people, Blue Apron et al aren't replacing a weekly shopping run, where you grab everything you need for a week. It's replacing people buying fast food, which is also very heavy on packaging.

My favorite was the single egg carton: https://i.imgur.com/tLAIx5Z.jpg

Sure, maybe it's not actually that much extra packaging compared to 1/12th of a normal egg carton, but it certainly felt ridiculous to receive in the mail...

I'm sure they will move towards compostable packaging

problem more or less solved from their standpoint

Plus, a lot of the additional cost is literally the cost of the gas spent delivering individual meal boxes to your door (which is pointless individual pollution).

That's a little disingenuous, they have a minimum order size, and consolidate delivery dates in an area to maximize route efficiency.

A fully packed delivery truck in a densely subscribed area would be more efficient in terms of fuel than all of those individuals driving to the store. But yes, minimal customers, in a big area, buying few meals consecutively would be worse.

I dont buy that you can assume that delivery saves fuel. You're assuming everyone makes one full round trip from home to the grocery store every week, when most people incorporate it with their other errands, commute, etc.

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