HelloFresh commits to offsetting 100% of its direct carbon emissions, making it the eco-friendly meal kit brand of choice

As HelloFresh has grown as a company over the past years, so has our responsibility towards our planet and the impact that we are having on it. In order to ensure that everybody's footprint – therefore including ours at HelloFresh – is as small as possible, the United Nations provided a guideline and a common goal:The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Agenda contains 17 defined Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which have since shaped the sustainability debate on a national and an international level – and decisively impact our work at HelloFresh.

Reducing our overall carbon footprint in line with the SDGs is something we committed to in early 2020. As a part of this strategy, we recently launched a carbon offset programme.

Our carbon offset programme

At HelloFresh we are particularly proud of our innovative supply chain. It inherently eliminates food waste, which is a major contributor to the CO₂ footprint in traditional food supply chains. However, we are convinced that there is much more to sustainability, which is why we initiated, amongst others, our carbon reduction strategy: In line with the UN Sustainable Development Goal 13, Climate Action, we are now committing to offset 100% of the direct carbon emissions from our internal operations and our offices, as well as all emissions from our delivery to customers as well as corporate travel. Across all our markets.

Teamwork for a sustainable future

Reducing our carbon footprint is an important challenge for us. In order to apply a consistent approach that complies with highest standards across markets, we decided to team up with Planetly, a climate-tech startup from Berlin. Planetly will help us analyse and validate our calculations. In addition, they will match us with local and global climate protection projects from their portfolio through which we will offset our carbon emissions for 2020 and onwards by continuously investing in them. HelloFresh will offset more than 40,000 metric tonnes of carbon in International Segment (this includes all markets except for the US) in 2020. In one of our largest markets, the US, we aim to offset at least 50,000 metric tonnes of CO2.

Our carbon reduction strategy

The carbon offset initiative follows our global green energy and carbon reduction strategy. In addition to the offset initiative, we have several other carbon reduction measures in place, as our Senior Vice President Sustainability, Tilman Eichstaedt points out:

“So far, HelloFresh has been and continues to be primarily aiming to reduce the emissions we directly produce. To achieve this, we deliver our boxes as efficiently as possible to our customers, for example by shipping them in batches and reducing the number of kilometres travelled through our innovative planning software. Our highly optimized production facilities emit significantly less CO₂ per euro of revenue compared to traditional food retailers, which need to cool, heat and light thousands of stores.”

HelloFresh looks to do even more for a sustainable future:

• We are currently transitioning our production facilities to green energy – partly using solar energy systems, such as those on our production facilities in Australia and in the Netherlands.

• In the Benelux region, in turn, HelloFresh operates its own fleet of delivery vans. They help us significantly reduce our outbound logistics-related emissions: In the city of Amsterdam for example we are already 100% emissions-free.

• We will focus on local and international projects that all contribute to removing carbon from the atmosphere. They all meet very strict rules guaranteed by established certificates (e.g. VCS, GoldStandard, NZ ETS and Woodland Carbon Code registry).

Keeping our CO₂ footprint to the minimum

Making food supply and consumption sustainable has always been an integral part of HelloFresh’s business model. By avoiding, reducing and offsetting carbon emissions wherever possible while continuously evaluating and measuring further actions, we set another important milestone. Driven by the goal to offer people around the world a sustainable way to enjoy food, the carbon offset programme perfectly complements our past and existing efforts towards becoming a sustainable company as we keep growing.