Sustainable Ready Meals
While the marketing around ready meals is all about their convenience, many of us are duly concerned about their environmental impact and sustainability.
To help you buy from ready meal brands that are making a conscious effort to minimize their impact, we have worked with the manufacturers to identify the various materials used in their ready meal packaging. On each brand profile you will see the materials broken down into the categories below.
We hope by providing a little more information it can be a lot more convenient to eat sustainably.
Recyclable
Items listed as recyclable are generally able to be recycled using curb side collections. Some materials may not be suitable for your local recycling trucks so check with your council restrictions to be safe.
Soft Plastics
We have chosen to identify soft plastics separately as they are not easily recyclable since the end of REDcycle. There are some options for homes to recycle soft plastics using paid schemes like RecycleSmart but very few councils offer free recycling for soft plastics, which is why we classify them separately.
Not Recyclable
Any materials listed as not recyclable are not able to be recycled using your curb side recycling bin. In some cases materials listed as not recyclable may actually be commercially recyclable or reusable but the meal manufacturers do not offer a return facility.
Reusable
Materials identified as reusable are generally able to be returned to the meal manufacturer. Of course boxes and other meal components could be reused at home in the right circumstances but generally we consider reusable to mean returnable whereby the manufacturer can reuse the materials commercially. The best examples are polystyrene cold boxes that are collected during your next delivery.
Compostable
Meal packaging that is identified as compostable can generally be commercially or residentially composted. The most common compostable packaging items we see are wool lining of delivery cartons. Occasionally film lids are compostable where they use bioplastics derived from plant sugars. Some (but not all) of theses compostable materials are eligible for curb side pickup if you have a food and organics (FOGO) bin.
Biodegradable
We classify biodegradable to capture materials like meal containers where the food contamination makes them difficult to recycle commercially and the materials are too heavy to compost domestically. In many cases materials specified as biodegradable are paper-based, like cardboard. If you consider a delivery box this means it is both recyclable and biodegradable and the most sustainable approach is likely to recycle the box. For contaminated cardboard like meal containers, placing them in FOGO bins where possible is more sustainable than sending to mixed landfill.
Other Sustainability Considerations
Our research here aims to classify food packaging but food miles are an important component of sustainability. Where possible it's important to identify locally sourced and manufactured meals to reduce your foodprint. To find ready meal delivery in your area check out our other guides.