Glad someone posted this. It's the main reason I don't use them, or even get take out from a restaurant.

Has there been an evaluation of environmental impact of distribution? While i would love pess packaging (some of the things they package individually are absurd), i am more concerned about rerouting the grocery distribution chain through a packing plant. This is already the most environmentally destructive leg of transport, and they seem to multiply that cost by some constant greater than one.

But of course, most plastic recycling is a myth, especially if you add in the environmental impact of collection and processing.

Yeah I loved Blue Apron for a few weeks, but cancelled because there was an unreasonable amount of waste. I'm sure I'm not the only customer to do so.

Curious about this - and I mean it in a 100% sincere way - how much waste does Blue Apron generate, and why is it unreasonable? How does it stack up to other common forms of waste generated by households?

They send individually packaged everything. Three meals amounts to about this much trash (those pieces of paper are full size 8.5x11" for scale. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CU1N8VJVEAATbNG.jpg:large The giant foil insulator (shown) and gel ice-packs (not shown) were what did it for me. I found conflicting information on whether they were recyclable, but the best answers I could find indicated no. Apart from those pieces, the remainder of the waste (shown) was a lot, but not totally unreasonable.

Basically, there are a bunch of plastic bags, an ice pack, some mylar-type bubble wrap, and the cardboard box. Personally, I find the waste complaints overblown. I suspect you'd find a whole lot more waste with restaurant cooking for example and I actually reuse a fair bit of the BA packaging for other purposes.

There are other services that have more of a focus on reusable containers but I have to wonder how much boils down to virtue signaling. I'm a bit skeptical that a reusable insulated package that UPS needs to make an extra trip to pickup is really that much less wasteful than what BA does.

> you'd find a whole lot more waste with restaurant cooking for example

Why would you say this? When I worked in restaurants, I remember very little waste (other than actual food waste and spoilage, of which there was tons.)

>other than actual food waste and spoilage, of which there was tons

Well yes. Not plastic bags but the overall level of wastage. (To say nothing of the energy/materials overhead associated with operating a restaurant.)

I have nothing against restaurants. I'm just saying that Blue Apron packaging waste is pretty small potatoes compared to a lot of other ways of obtaining food.

I wonder how likely it is you'll get a good discussion about the pros and cons of reusable packaging when you start off by calling people hypocrites?

How accurate are those, though? I've been using Blue Apron for a while and we just put all the stuff in one of the old BA boxes and ship it back to them for recycling and reuse. The only stuff that we can't send back are the pieces of packaging that were used to store meat or other perishable goods and that would be the case for any of these types of goods.