We still use these, and buy ingredients ourselves. I don't usually do the farmer's market shopping, but I do find some of their recipes respecting the season.
But there's no way around the insulation and frozen gel-packs, and I think they should close the loop on those and take them back. Just say, throw the gel-packs in the box with all the plastic containers, slap this label on the outside, and UPS will take the box away when they drop off next week's food.
They do: http://origin-blog.blueapron.com/recycling-faq/
You collect a couple of shipments worth of packaging, stuff it in a box, and print out a label for it from your account.
That sounds like a really good idea. We also tried Hello Fresh, but indeed, many things we already owned in bigger bottles. Combine it with a lower price indeed and I wonder what it will mean for sales.
By the way, our local supermarkets are also starting to make these packages of "everything you need for one meal for 2 or 4". You can also have them delivered. In general though they are much more expensive then taking the products from the shelves, but that is to be expected. Robotozation of large stores combined with self-picking up of crates of supplies can fix that too (we have that at some stores, minus the robots).
Meanwhile here (in the Netherlands), you see more and more small electric vehicles delivering groceries around the city and picking up and bringing back elderly that want to shop. Things are really changing.
The more "exotic" ingredients would come with the box. For example, I'm kinda rural, so fresh herbs such as coriander and parsley aren't easy to come by. Fernly is suggesting that company's like Blue Apron should recommend always stocking certain long life standard ingredients that are commonly used in their recipes. They could perhaps even have this as an option on your account so that you get a bit of a discount for agreeing to hold these ingredients rather than having them sent out in tiny amounts in wasteful packaging.
You might look into joining a CSA. I bought a 4-box trial for my parents as a gift and they were pretty happy with it. It's all local and comes packed in a single cardboard box with no plastic...about as ecological as you can get. The friend that recommended it to me claimed there was a forum site where people traded recipe ideas for how to use the items in the box.
My parents decided not to renew, but for a rather comical reason. They got in the habit of reusing the plastic bags they buy vegetables in to pick up after their dog. They realized if they continued to get their vegetables from the CSA, they'd have to figure out a different strategy for picking up poop.
Overall, very happy with the service :).
As for the packaging gel thing. With HelloFresh you're supposed to keep them and wait a few weeks for it to fill up a box then let them know and they will come and pick it up.
Thanks, Hadi, Founder PeachDish
https://www.bustle.com/articles/125641-is-recycling-worth-it...
(Ignore the buzzfeed-worthy title. The links within are good.)
The only consumer-side materials worth recycling as things stand are aluminum, paper, & cardboard. Everything else takes more energy to recycle than it saves.
(not counting specific, specialty recycling needs like lead-acid batteries or electronics. These cost significant money to recycle, but are done so for environmental reasons.)
Energy/carbon costs should be the driver when choosing appropriate consumer behavior, and recycling does a surprisingly poor job of keeping overall energy costs low.
Of course there's still bag and packaging waste at the grocery store and the energy costs of individual transportation to the store, keeping the lights on, etc.
Something not noted in the linked article is that all three let you select your 3 or 4 meals from a wider menu with at least 6 choices. So if you don't like sweet potatoes, as someone noted here, you could usually avoid them.
The linked article ends with what is probably the most common knock on all these companies: the uncomfortable feeling that the packaging is a huge first-world-privileged waste of resources. For example: if a recipe calls for balsamic vinegar, there will be one little plastic bottle containing 1.5oz of balsamic with a twist-off metal screw cap and a tiny label. Or there will be three, one-Tbsp tear-open foil packets of soy sauce, or exactly two green onions in a zip-lock baggie. And so on.
All the companies will claim with marginal truth that all the packaging can be recycled. The little plastic bottle goes in the blue bin. The baggies go in your plastic-film bag (if your recycler takes plastic film). You break down the big cardboard box and fold that into the bin.
But for temperature control the box is lined with an insulating blanket. That's usually a "space-blanket" type foil and plastic thing that is not recyclable, or else it's an inch-thick paper-and-jute blanket that you can put in with your garden-trimmings green bin.
And the freeze bags! Two or three plastic bags of frozen gel. You have to drop them in the bathtub and let them thaw, which takes hours (they are very effective), then you can cut them open, pour the gel into the toilet and flush it, and only then put the deflated bag into the plastic-film bag for recycling (if supported).
That's a lot of work to assuage first-world-privilege guilt. It's the main reason we finally gave up on the real convenience and interest of the meal services.