I signed up for three different Australian meal kit services last month. Not because I needed help cooking dinner — I wanted to see the packaging.

The results were about what I expected, and worse than what the marketing promised.

The promise vs. the reality

Every major meal kit company in Australia talks about sustainability on their website. Reduced food waste. Pre-portioned ingredients. Less driving to the shops. And those things are real, to a point.

But here’s what arrived at my door across three deliveries: insulated boxes lined with multiple types of plastic, individual plastic bags for every single ingredient, gel ice packs made from materials that can’t go in kerbside recycling, and enough cardboard to furnish a small fort.

One meal kit — a simple Thai green curry for two — arrived in seventeen separate pieces of packaging. Seventeen.

What the research says

A 2024 study from the University of Melbourne compared the total environmental footprint of meal kits versus supermarket shopping for equivalent meals. The findings were mixed but leaned in an uncomfortable direction for meal kit fans.

Yes, meal kits produce less food waste because portions are exact. That’s genuine. But the packaging waste more than offsets the food waste reduction in most scenarios. The net environmental impact was roughly equivalent to supermarket shopping, and sometimes worse.

The transportation question is complicated too. Meal kits require cold chain logistics — refrigerated trucks making individual stops. A single trip to Woolies in your own car, while not exactly green, at least consolidates the journey.

The recyclability problem

Here’s where it gets really murky. Several Australian meal kit companies claim their packaging is “recyclable.” And technically, some of it is. The cardboard boxes, sure. Some of the plastic containers if you wash them properly and your local council accepts that resin type.

But the gel ice packs? The insulated liners? The small plastic sachets holding 30ml of soy sauce? Most of that goes straight to landfill because the recycling infrastructure doesn’t exist for those materials in most Australian council areas.

I contacted two of the three companies to ask about their packaging recycling rates. One didn’t respond. The other said they were “working on it” and pointed me to a page about their future commitments for 2027.

Who’s doing it better

Not everything is bleak. Marley Spoon has been testing reusable cool boxes in parts of Sydney and Melbourne. Dinnerly has reduced their packaging weight by about 20 percent over the past year. Some smaller operators like Local Feast in Brisbane have moved to compostable packaging almost entirely, though they’re limited to a smaller delivery area.

The most interesting development is companies starting to use AI-driven logistics to optimise delivery routes and reduce the need for excessive insulation. When you can guarantee a tighter delivery window, you don’t need as much ice.

What should you actually do?

I’m not going to tell you to cancel your meal kit subscription. For some people — busy parents, people who genuinely struggle with meal planning, people recovering from illness — meal kits serve a real purpose.

But I’d encourage this: pay attention to the packaging. Actually look at what you’re throwing away after each delivery. And ask the companies hard questions. Customer pressure is the only thing that moves these businesses faster than their current timelines.

Better yet, consider the alternatives. A weekend trip to the farmers market with a rough meal plan gets you the same variety with a fraction of the waste. Batch cooking on Sundays does what meal kits do without the seventeen pieces of packaging.

The convenience is real. But so is the waste. We should at least be honest about both.