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Is getting food delivered worse for the climate? Sometimes it’s better
Micaeli and Gerhard du Plessis sometimes use a grocery delivery service, as well as prepackaged meal kits, and they get takeout delivered to their suburban Washington, D.C., home about once a week. With two full-time jobs and two children, it makes time-saving sense. But they’ve wondered how it affects their carbon footprint.
Ryan Kellman/NPR
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Ryan Kellman/NPR
Climate change is affecting our food, and our food is affecting the climate. NPR is dedicating a week to stories and conversations about the search for solutions.
There’s a whiteboard on the refrigerator in the du Plessises’ kitchen that the couple uses to plan dinners for the week — what to make and who will do the cooking. But with two young children, full-time jobs and the nearest supermarket 20 minutes away, figuring out what to eat sometimes feels like a chore.
To lighten the load, Micaeli and Gerhard du Plessis regularly use a grocery delivery service. They’ve also tried prepackaged meal kits and they get takeout delivered to their suburban Washington, D.C., home about once a week.
“Obviously, we’d rather be able to go out and buy fresh stuff every day, but that’s not realistic right now,” Micaeli says, as she holds her youngest, Eva, in a baby sling and unpacks boxes that have just arrived by Instacart. “With two little kids … at Costco, it’s just a really unpleasant experience. So I’d much prefer to pay someone a few extra dollars to just deliver it for us.”
America’s appetite for online grocery sales soared more than 50% during the COVID-19 pandemic, from $62 billion in 2019 to $96 billion in 2020, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. One in five consumers now has groceries delivered to their door at least once a month. By 2029, Statista estimates, the market will be worth $455 billion.
Meanwhile, there’s been a steep increase in demand for restaurant takeout via such services as DoorDash and Uber Eats. Meal kits like HelloFresh and Home Chef, which come with premeasured ingredients, are also experiencing strong growth.
An Uber Eats delivery courier rides an electric bicycle through the Park Slope neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York.
Amir Hamja/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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Amir Hamja/Bloomberg via Getty Images
At the same time, food production and transportation make up as much as one-third of a typical U.S. household’s annual contribution to climate change-inducing emissions. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that 30% of food produced in the U.S. is wasted. And once in landfills, rotting food creates methane — a potent gas that heats the Earth. So, changing consumer behavior to minimize waste and reduce transportation could have a significant impact on the overall pollution that is fueling climate change.
“It’s crossed my mind,” Micaeli says about the environmental impact. “Unfortunately, it’s one of those things like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It’s like we have to meet our basic needs before we can be concerned about things like that.”
Gerhard du Plessis grabs a dinner plate while preparing to eat the Thai food he ordered for delivery.
Ryan Kellman/NPR
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Ryan Kellman/NPR
In 2022, researchers from the University of Michigan and Ford Motor Co. modeled a single 36-item grocery cart to compare greenhouse emissions from an e-commerce grocery delivery and a traditional trip to the store to get the same items. Gregory Keoleian and colleagues at the university’s Center for Sustainable Systems found that using an electric vehicle to pick up groceries could cut emissions by as much as half, compared to a gas-powered vehicle.
They also found that home delivery could be an even better option. That’s because with a delivery vehicle, orders are often clustered, with a driver dropping off not just your groceries, but also hitting neighbors during the same run. “Delivery is actually going to be more efficient in general than driving yourself in a gasoline SUV to the store to pick up your groceries,” Keoleian says.
After waving goodbye to the delivery person, the du Plessises’ children wait outside with their parents.
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Meal kits versus cooking from scratch
In Sonora, Calif., Scott Jones, his wife and elderly father have made extensive use of HelloFresh. One of the company’s meal kits that is designed to feed two people works out “absolutely perfect [with] very little waste” for the three of them, he says. He’s also impressed with the packaging, much of which is compostable or recyclable.
Still, he’s a bit worried about the size of the carbon footprint such meal kits might produce, a concern echoed by the du Plessis family.
“I think the worst would probably be the meal kits,” Micaeli says. “Yeah, with all that packaging,” her husband, Gerhard, agrees.
In fact, a 2019 study found that, comparatively, meal kits could be one of the best options for lower greenhouse gas emissions. Shelie Miller and a group of researchers from the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability compared the carbon footprint of meal kits with the same recipes sourced from a grocery store. She and her colleagues looked at emissions for each meal caused by food waste and packaging, and the supply chain structure.
The meal kits “did have more packaging overall and more impact associated with that packaging,” Miller says. “But what we really saw was that the meal kits had more efficient use of food.”
On average, the greenhouse gas emissions for a meal made with ingredients purchased at a grocery store are 33% higher than a comparable prepackaged kit, the study found.
The du Plessises sit down to eat the Thai food they had delivered for dinner.
Ryan Kellman/NPR
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Ryan Kellman/NPR
The reason? When we cook from scratch, we tend to buy more ingredients than we need. Some of that goes to waste, Miller says. And leftovers get shoved to the back of the refrigerator and forgotten.
Case in point: At the du Plessis household, Gerhard says finishing up leftovers is a “50-50” proposition. “If you want to look in the fridge, there’s just Tupperware full of leftovers from last night and the night before” that might never get eaten, he says.
But shopping at a farmers market can help offset the carbon footprint of cooking from scratch, says Jury Gualandris, a professor at Western University’s Ivey Business School in Ontario, Canada, who studies food waste in supply chains. In one research paper, he and co-author Sourabh Jain consider the sustainability of individual consumer choices at a supermarket or farmers market compared to those made by a meal kit provider.
“When you cook your own meal, if you do it by sourcing materials that are grown locally, then you will cut the carbon footprint by a substantial amount …” Gualandris says.
Zelda leans in for help with a bite from her father.
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E-bikes, drones and robots deliver a smaller carbon footprint
When it comes to delivery services like DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub, Gerhard du Plessis theorizes that “because this guy’s literally delivering two burgers and like two sodas,” such options would have a big footprint. “For the volume of food compared to the amount of carbon emitted, yeah, the equation doesn’t quite add up.”
Unlike grocery deliveries, it’s difficult to coordinate multiple drop-offs in a single vehicle, according to William Rose, an associate professor of supply chain management at Iowa State University.
A driver typically picks up an order quickly and, in the case of takeout food, ideally gets it to the customer while it’s still hot, Rose says. It becomes “impossible to cluster those deliveries,” he says — unless people who live near each other decide at the same time to order from the same restaurant or eateries within close proximity.
But there are ways to reduce the heavier carbon footprint even for this type of delivery.
E-bikes can save a lot on emissions and they are substantially cheaper to operate compared to automobiles. Keoleian says the study he worked on also looked at emerging technologies such as drones and sidewalk robots, finding that they could significantly reduce carbon emissions on small deliveries, such as restaurant takeout.
But he is quick to point out that the “last mile” of a delivery accounts for only about 10% of the greenhouse gases in the food supply chain. A much bigger factor is the type of food we eat, and “about a quarter to a third of the emissions are due to the food waste.”
Zelda gets a temporary tattoo as a treat after dinner. Later, pictured at right, Micaeli loads dishes into the dishwasher.
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Key takeaways for ordinary consumers
For any type of delivery, sedans are better than SUVs, which are better than pickup trucks, Keoleian says. Bundling a grocery run with other errands or the work commute is another good strategy to reduce your footprint.
But these options aren’t for everyone. Meal kits and food delivery can be more expensive and aren’t affordable for everyone. And yet, they can also be indispensable.
It wasn’t the pandemic but a serious accident that changed Halima Jenkins’ shopping habits. About a decade ago, she fell down a flight of stairs and now, she says, “I have days where I can’t drive. I have days where I can’t move.”
Her daughters don’t drive yet, and her husband doesn’t always have time to shop. So grocery delivery has become the norm in their Hyattsville, Md., home. The family also gets restaurant food delivered by DoorDash or Uber Eats once or twice a week.
“There are days where I just feel like existing is profoundly difficult,” Jenkins says. “I’m happy to just have something delivered depending on how capable I am that day.”
So, what are the simple takeaways for ordinary consumers?
If meal kits fit your lifestyle, they may be the most climate-conscious choice. The packaging might put you off, but you’re less likely to waste food.
When it comes to groceries, delivery via a service like Instacart may be a better option for the environment compared to driving to the store, unless you can bundle grocery runs with your work commute or other errands.
Limiting restaurant takeout via DoorDash or Uber Eats also will help reduce your carbon footprint. But with these services, the mode of delivery makes a difference. In a busy city, where the driver uses an e-bike or electric car, the footprint of the service will be significantly less than a meal brought to you in a gasoline-powered vehicle.
For decades, immigrants who have followed the rules and have not broken the law have had hopes of earning a green card, a document that allows them to live legally in the United States and gain a path to citizenship.
But under new guidance issued by the Trump administration, immigrants can now be denied a green card for expressing political opinions, such as participating in pro-Palestinian campus protests, posting criticism of Israel on social media and desecrating the American flag, according to internal Department of Homeland Security training materials reviewed by The New York Times.
The documents, which have not been previously reported, show how expansively the Trump administration is carrying out a directive from last August to vet green card applicants for “anti-American” and “antisemitic” views.
The administration includes criticism of Israel as a potentially disqualifying factor, with the training materials citing as an example of questionable speech a social media post that declares, “Stop Israeli Terror in Palestine” and shows the Israeli flag crossed out.
The materials were distributed last month to immigration officers at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security and handles applications for green cards and other forms of legal status.
They reflect how U.S.C.I.S. — long considered the gateway agency for legal migration — has rapidly transformed under President Trump into another cog in his administration’s deportation machine. The agency has worked to strip naturalized Americans of their citizenship and has hired armed federal agents to investigate immigration crimes.
The administration is also granting permanent legal residency to far fewer applicants. Green card approvals have fallen by more than half in recent months, according to a Times analysis of agency data.
“There is no room in America for aliens who espouse anti-American ideologies or support terrorist organizations,” Joseph Edlow, the agency’s director, told Congress in February.
Critics of Mr. Trump’s approach say the administration is seeking to restrict legitimate political speech, and has conflated opposition to Israeli government policies with antisemitism.
Basing green card decisions on “ideological screenings is fundamentally un-American and should have no place in a country built on the promise of free expression,” said Amanda Baran, a senior agency official under President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Administration officials said they were defending American values.
“If you hate America, you have no business demanding to live in America,” said Zach Kahler, a spokesman for U.S.C.I.S.
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said the administration’s policies had “nothing to do with free speech” and were meant to protect “American institutions, the safety of citizens, national security and the freedoms of the United States.”
The administration has moved aggressively against immigrants for expressing political views that officials have deemed anti-American, making ideology a central part of its immigration vetting process. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has revoked the visas of pro-Palestinian student activists, including one who wrote a column criticizing her university’s response to pro-Palestinian demands.
The Department of Homeland Security has proposed reviewing the social media histories of tourists seeking to visit the United States.
Immigration officers have significant discretion in deciding whether to grant foreigners long-term permanent residence. They have long considered a variety of factors, including criminal records, national security threats, family ties to the United States and employment histories.
Ideology has also traditionally been one of those factors. In some cases, U.S. law forbids officers from granting green cards to people who have belonged to a Communist or other “totalitarian” political party, have promoted anarchy or have called for the overthrow of the U.S. government by “force or violence or other unconstitutional means.”
But in the past, immigration officers have focused on statements that could incite or encourage violence, given concerns about infringing on constitutionally protected speech, former U.S.C.I.S. officials said.
The new training materials reviewed by The Times guide immigration officers through the factors they should consider when ruling on green card applications. They discourage officers from granting green cards to people with a history of “endorsing, promoting or supporting anti-American views” or “antisemitic terrorism, ideologies or groups.”
Immigration officers have been told to weigh those factors as “overwhelmingly negative.”
The documents list support for “subversive” ideologies as among other factors that could lead to an application being rejected. As an example, the materials point to someone “holding a sign advocating overthrow of the U.S. government.”
In addition, the guidance describes the desecration of the American flag as a negative factor, citing Mr. Trump’s executive order last year directing the Justice Department to prosecute protesters who burn the flag. The Supreme Court has ruled that flag burning is a form of political expression protected by the First Amendment.
Immigration officers have also been told to scrutinize applicants who encourage antisemitism “through rhetorical or physical actions.” They were instructed to “focus particularly on aliens who engaged in on-campus anti-American and antisemitic activities” after the Hamas attacks against Israel in 2023, the documents show.
Further examples in the documents of conduct characterized as antisemitic include a social media post showing a map of Israel with the nation’s name crossed out and replaced with the word “Palestine.” Another illustrative post suggests that Israelis should “taste what people in Gaza are tasting.”
Immigration officers must elevate all cases involving “potential anti-American and/or antisemitic conduct or ideology” to their managers and to the agency’s general counsel’s office for review, according to the documents.
In recent months, the agency has also changed the way it refers to the employees who adjudicate green card applications, long known as “immigration services officers.” In job postings, it now calls them “homeland defenders.”
“Protect your homeland and defend your culture,” one posting says.
Steven Rich contributed reporting.
Additional work by Jana Tauschinski
Oil and gas tanker location and destination data are from Kpler. The map shows the latest position for vessels with an active AIS signal on April 19–20, filtered by minimum capacity thresholds: crude tankers of at least 50,000 deadweight tonnage (DWT); oil product tankers of at least 55,000 DWT; oil/chemical tankers of at least 40,000 DWT; LNG carriers of at least 150,000 cubic metres; and LPG carriers of at least 50,000 cubic metres. Net fossil fuel import data by country are based on Ember analysis of the IEA World Energy Balances 2023.
A 26-year-old man is facing two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of two University of South Florida doctoral students who went missing last week, local authorities said Saturday.
The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in Florida said that evidence presented to the state attorney’s office resulted in the charges against Hisham Abugharbieh, the roommate of Zamil Limon, one of the doctoral students.
Abugharbieh is accused of premediated murder with a weapon. He was arrested on Friday, the same day Limon was found dead.
The family of Nahida Bristy, the other doctoral student, told CBS News that police said she is also likely dead. That is based on the volume of blood discovered at Abugharbieh’s residence, which he shared with Limon.
“Police told us she is no longer with us,” Bristy’s brother, Zahid Prato, said early Saturday.
The family was told her body may never be found and police believe she may have been dismembered, according to Prato.
CBS News has reached out to police for more information.
Authorities said in a statement Saturday they were still searching for Bristy.
Limon’s remains were found on the Howard Franklin Bridge in Tampa Friday morning, Chief Deputy Joseph Maurer with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office said. His cause of death was pending autopsy results.
Deputies with the sheriff’s office took Abugharbieh into custody on Friday after responding to a domestic violence call at a home in the Lake Forest Community, a neighborhood near USF’s Tampa campus, officials said. He also faces charges of domestic violence and evidence tampering, as well as a charge of failing to report a death to law enforcement.
Limon and Bristy, both 27, had last been seen in the Tampa area on April 16.
Limon was studying the use of AI in environmental science and was set to present his doctoral thesis this week, his family said. Bristy is studying chemical engineering.
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