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GrubHub users concerned about how your Thai food delivery impacts the environment needn't fear. Last week the online restaurant delivery service began purchasing carbon credits to offset the environmental costs involved with delivering to customers here and in San Francisco.
Grubhub is purchasing the credits from a local company, Carbon Solutions Group. Carbon credits are a form of emissions trading used to control pollution by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in emissions. GrubHub has purchased carbon credits to both offset the environmental costs of its deliveries and its electrical usage. They've long had in place policies to reduce waste, including requesting less packaging, napkins and utensils.
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I heart grubhub. I dont't really get the "offsetting" by buying energy credits. What's the economic value in that? If anything it seems like a way to lose money for poor envrionmental practices - which makes sense for large toxic industries - but grub hub?
Someone help me see the reason for buying carbon credits for a firm like grubhub other than PR.
Carbon Credits are good for PR, but they are supposed to help fund environmental (carbon reducing) projects that would otherwise not be economically feasible.
The thing I don't get is that GH doesn't actually deliver the food so what are they offsetting? Let me answer my own question.
According to the Sun Times article, they are offsetting their server energy usage. Pardon the cynic in me, but I bet that Grub Hub will spend more money advertising this 'going green' than will actually go directly towards environmental projects.
I noticed you were talking about carbon trading, and I thought you might be interested in a new documentary that has just been released that examines the impact of carbon trading around the world.
The Carbon Connection looks at two communities affected by one new global market – the trade in carbon dioxide. In Scotland a town has been polluted by oil and chemical companies since the 1940s. In Brazil local people's water and land is being swallowed up by destructive monoculture eucalyptus tree plantations. Both communities now share a new threat. As part of the deal to reduce greenhouse gases that cause dangerous climate change, major polluters can now buy carbon credits that allow them to pay someone else to reduce emissions instead of cutting their own pollution.
What this means for those living next to the oil industry in Scotland is the continuation of pollution caused by their toxic neighbours. Meanwhile in Brazil the schemes that generate carbon credits gives an injection of cash for more planting of the damaging eucalyptus tree. The two communities are now connected by bearing the brunt of the new trade in carbon credits. The Carbon Connection follows the story of two groups of people from each community who learned to use video cameras and made their own films about living with the impacts of the carbon market. From mental health issues in Scotland to the loss of medicinal plants in Brazil, the communities discover the connections they have with each other and the film follows them on this journey.
40 minutes | PAL/NTSC | English/Spanish/Portuguese subtitles
More information at http://www.carbontradewatch.org/carbonconnection/
I'm the founder of GrubHub. One of the above comments is correct in that the restaurants actually do the deliveries themselves. However, we felt that this potentially contributed extra pollution to the environment. So, we decided on a two step response:
1)offer users a way to request that no plasticware be added to the order and minimal packaging used in delivery
2)we purchased carbon offsets voluntarily to offset the carbon production of the actual car delivery of the food for all orders made through our site.
Our motivation is primarily environmental. Secondarily, it is in fact, good press. However, we will continue purchasing the credits long after the press for this policy has blown over.