Reducing our carbon emissions is one of the most important and impactful aspects on our sustainability journey. That's why we launched and have since been meticulously pursuing our CO₂ mitigation strategy. Despite a challenging operating environment over the course of the past year, we have stayed focused to avoid, reduce, replace and offset carbon emissions in a number of ways. We are very pleased with the progress that we have made so far: 

• Carbon emissions at our production facilities decreased from 9.3 to 4.1 grams per euro revenue in 2020.

• In 2020 HelloFresh became the first global carbon-neutral meal kit company by offsetting 100 % of our direct carbon emissions.

“In a year filled with unprecedented events, we have managed to become our customers’ eco-friendly meal kit of choice”, says Tilman Eichstädt, Senior Vice President Supply, Product & Sustainability at HelloFresh. “But hitting net-zero emissions is not enough. In line with our carbon reduction strategy, we plan to further reduce our carbon footprint in 2021 and beyond. Our goal is to reduce our production facility emissions per euro revenue by 60 % from 2019 to 2022.” 

Optimizing efficiencies in logistics

Our short and innovative supply chain has inherently lower carbon emissions than traditional food retailers - in parts because we require fewer logistics to transport our ingredients from farm to fork. In 2020 HelloFresh has further improved its operational efficiency in logistics. In the Benelux countries we are collaborating with transport providers to optimize the pick-up of ingredients at various suppliers which has reduced CO₂ emissions for inbound goods by 20 %. 

Moreover, our US business is participating in the US EPA SmartWay program, which helps companies advance supply chain sustainability by measuring, benchmarking and improving freight transportation efficiency. We have also joined the US EPA Green Power Partnership to help reduce the negative health impacts of air emissions including those related to ozone, fine particles, acid rain, and regional haze.

Setting new guidelines: HelloFresh Energy Policy

Another advantage of our business model is that we need to operate fewer buildings than traditional retail, as we only depend on one to two distribution centers in most of our markets. That means less energy usage for cooling, heating and lights and in turn fewer CO₂ emissions.

On top of that we started to replace conventional energy sources with renewable energy. That includes investments in photovoltaic installations on our production facilities in multiple markets including the Netherlands and Australia. In 2020 we also introduced our energy policy and implemented an energy management system across three of our European markets (Germany, Benelux and UK), with the plan to apply it internationally across all markets. The policy defines further energy-related guidelines and principles, as well as our long-term goals. We are currently working towards receiving the ISO 50001 certification at our four biggest distribution centers in Europe as well as our HQ in Berlin. ISO 50001 is an internationally recognized certification that will verify our energy efficiency and help us meet our long-term goals.

HelloFresh Australia shows what our measures to reduce carbon emissions can look like locally: We have installed solar panel systems on our warehouses in Sydney, generating 148 MWh of electrical power and thus avoiding 104 tonnes of CO₂ emissions since the beginning of 2020. In New Zealand we partnered with the country’s largest renewable energy power company, Meridian, to agree on a Certified Renewable Energy contract. This guarantees that the total amount of energy which is consumed in our distribution centers comes from renewable sources.