In some cases, food delivery can be a more climate-friendly option than cooking at home, which often requires multiple trips to the grocery store.

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choochart choochaikupt/Getty Images

In some cases, food delivery can be a more climate-friendly option than cooking at home, which often requires multiple trips to the grocery store.

choochart choochaikupt/Getty Images

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.

Since the height of the pandemic, there has been a boom in the use of food delivery services. It’s no longer necessary to step foot in a grocery store, when you can easily order takeout from DoorDash, groceries from Instacart, meal kits from HelloFresh.

Day 2 of NPR’s Climate Solutions Week is all about the environmental impact of how we shop for our food. So this episode, NPR correspondent Scott Neuman reports on a question we’ve all wanted to know the answer to: What is the impact of getting food delivered on our carbon footprint?

Interested in hearing more climate solutions? Email us at shortwave@npr.org – we’d love to hear your ideas!

Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.

Listen to Short Wave on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

This episode was produced by Jessica Yung and edited by Rebecca Ramirez, who also checked the facts.