How Environmentally Friendly are Regular Orders?
How setting up a regular online grocery delivery can help your carbon footprint…
There’s lots of discussion around the environmental benefits of shopping for your groceries online. Spearheaded by Amazon, research does show that choosing an online grocery delivery over travelling to the supermarket can reduce miles travelled and food waste. However, as online shopping gets more complicated, it’s important to consider all the factors before deciding on purchasing decisions. Evaluating where your food comes from is a key part of this, and when shopping at an organic, community-focussed shop such as Eversfield Organic, you can be sure that the food you’re buying is ethically produced. It’s also important that you can get everything you need for your online weekly shop in once place, which is exactly what we offer with our new Regular Order basket…
The Benefits of a Regular Order: A Recap
At the beginning of January, we talked about the benefits of a Regular Order with Eversfield Organic for a healthy and convenient New Year. Our Regular Order system means you can spend more time enjoying life and less time in the supermarket. It’s quick and easy to collate all your favourite foods in one basket, which is easily accessible in the Manage Orders section of your account. Our new system also offers more flexibility, allowing you to add and remove products at different frequencies, meaning you’re not confined to the same order every time. This section of your account is also where you can change delivery details such as address and name, plus make changes to payment cards.
We also believe that we shouldn’t dictate when you need your organic food box, so we offer nationwide delivery from Tuesday through to Saturday with a range of delivery options. You’ll also receive email reminders to let you know when to make changes to your order if required, once your order has been processed and once your order is dispatched.
Environmentally Friendly Ways to Shop
A while back, we also discussed the environmental benefits of placing an organic food delivery online. At the time, research suggested that online grocery deliveries were more planet-friendly, with delivery vans covering less miles in total than individual trips to the supermarket. Although typically delivery vans produce more CO2 than cars, carefully planned routes and grouping deliveries by geographical location results in few emissions and miles covered.
Another huge contributor to climate change is food waste. Again, research suggests that placing your weekly food shop online can help to reduce food waste as consumers are more likely to buy smaller amounts of what they need. There’s a reason they say don’t go food shopping when you’re hungry – we’ve all been there.
However, as online grocery deliveries get ever more complicated, it’s important to consider some other factors too. The organic food that you’re shopping for is a key consideration, choosing produce with fewer food miles and from retailers who work to boost their local economy. For example, at Eversfield Organic we pride ourselves on being a family-run, local farm selling organic food from local, artisan producers including grass fed beef from our farm. By cutting out the supermarket middleman, we can reduce food miles as livestock and organic food is typically taken from producer to distributor to retailer.
It's also important to think about what we’re choosing to add to our online food order. Research shows that 65% of a meal’s carbon footprint comes from how it’s produced. Therefore, choosing to shop for organic, ethically produced food is always a great purchasing decision. Organic food is made in the most natural way possible, reducing the use of manmade fertilisers and pesticides and turning waste produce into compost. At Eversfield Organic, our work on the Farm to sustain our closed loop sustainability system results in offsetting carbon emissions as carbon sequestration takes place. Read more about our closed loop sustainability system here.
Newer research shows that the online food marketplace is getting more and more complex, especially in terms environmental impact. Shopping for different products from different retailers can have an adverse effect on the environment as food miles and delivery miles rack up. With this is mind, placing your online food order from one shop can help to reduce your carbon footprint. Our wide (and still growing!) range of organic food available from Eversfield Organic makes it easier than ever to get all you need for your online food shop in one place. From organic meat and organic fruit and vegetables to larder essentials, organic dairy, bakery and confectionary (even a tipple or two), it’s all available on our online shop.
With new evidence and conflicting arguments, it’s hard to know where and how to get your weekly food shop. However, choosing a Regular Order with Eversfield Organic has many benefits, for you, your family and the environment too. Get started on this new way to shop here.