HelloFresh has announced that it has exceeded its sustainability plans for 2020 and will further expand its efforts for 2021 and beyond. The recently published Sustainability Report 2020 highlights key achievements, in line with the “Sustainable Development Goals” defined by the United Nations.
“In 2020, we offered our customers a safe, convenient way to source fresh ingredients when they needed it most. Our responsibility for our planet and our people has significantly increased with the size of our company, which is why we’ve continued to radically focus our efforts on progressing our sustainability agenda over the past year,” says Thomas Griesel co-founder of HelloFresh.
Carbon Reduction Strategy Shows Initial Success
Key initiatives from 2020 included launching HelloFresh’s carbon reduction strategy. This also included offsetting 100% of direct carbon emissions from its internal operations and offices, plus all emissions from delivery to customers and corporate travel. HelloFresh has since become the first global carbon-neutral meal kit company and will continue to offset emissions over the course of 2021.
First reduction initiatives resulted in emissions at HelloFresh’s production facilities* decreasing from 9.3 to 4.1 grams per euro revenue. This was driven by improved operational efficiency as well as replacing conventional energy sources with renewable energy and investments in solar photovoltaic installations in HelloFresh’s production facilities. These initiatives will also continue to pay into the goal of reducing emissions in production facilities by 60% per euro revenue by 2022.
In 2020, HelloFresh’s total carbon emissions across scopes 1, 2 and 3 amounted to 96,310 tonnes of CO2.
Ongoing Efforts To Reduce Food Waste
The company is further strengthening its ambitions by aiming to halve food waste to landfill or incineration per euro revenue by 2022. From 2019 to 2020 HelloFresh already succeeded in reducing the amount of food waste from 0.6 to 0.4 grams per euro revenue. Out of the nearly 5,000 tonnes of surplus food from the company’s operations, 73% was donated to various organisations and communities across our local markets. Further efforts to reduce food waste include managing supply chain efficiencies, continuous improvement of packaging solutions as well as ongoing collaborations with research partners.
For the first time, HelloFresh has set itself tangible, group wide environmental targets for two of the most pressing global issues:
- Reducing production facilities CO2 emissions per euro revenue by 60 % by 2022
- Reducing food waste to landfill or incineration per euro revenue by 50 % by 2022
The baseline for both targets is 2019.
Thomas Griesel says: “The targets, in two of the most important and impactful areas of sustainability, provide the necessary framework for significantly progressing our efforts and will enable us to set standards for measuring other areas of environmental impact.”
