In 2021, iFood made a public commitment in the area of the environment, aligned with the Sustainable Development Goal number 13 of the United Nations: action against global climate change.
Since that year, the company has pursued two goals for 2025. The first is to reduce pollution generated by the use of plastic in delivery; the second, to become carbon neutral – with at least 50% of its deliveries being made in non-polluting modes, such as bicycles and electric motorcycles.
O iFood also joined #DelivreDePlástico, an initiative of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the main environmental authority in the United Nations (UN) system, and by Oceana, the largest non-profit non-governmental organization focused on protecting our oceans.
How does iFood want to achieve these environmental goals?
To meet these goals, the company is already implementing actions such as:
Reducing the use of plastic
The Friends of Nature campaign encourages anyone who places an order on iFood to avoid sending forks, spoons, knives, straws and other plastic items upon delivery. Today, more than 90% of the restaurants that are on the app have joined this initiative, and 80% of customers prefer to receive their order without plastic cutlery.
Therefore, since 2021 more than 360 million orders were delivered without these disposable items, preventing 130 tons of single-use plastic from being discarded every month, on average.
Emissions compensation
iFood has metrics for the volume of polluting gases emitted per kilometer driven in the delivery operation. With this number, the company offsets CO emissions2 in deliveries. The resources used in compensation are invested in projects to preserve and regenerate the environment and generate renewable energy.
Non-polluting modes
To reduce the emission of polluting gases during deliveries, iFood supports and encourages the use of non-polluting modes, such as bicycles and electric motorbikes. In 2021, the company created the iFood Pedal, the world's first bicycle rental service exclusively for couriers, which is already used by 18,000 couriers. And the following year, launched an electric motorcycle in partnership with VOLTZ.
Sustainable packaging
Since 2021, iFood has worked in partnership with Suzano in actions to develop sustainable packaging for delivery. That year, the partners launched the “Packaging of the Future” challenge to encourage the development of new plastic-free packaging.
In 2022, they made available 230 thousand packages made from recyclable 100% paper to be used in the Rock in Rio food area. These packaging, in fact, were recycled and transformed into bags used for delivery in São Paulo.
Support for recycling
To encourage people to recycle, iFood has been implementing PEVs (Voluntary Delivery Point) in several capitals. To date, the company has made 104 PEVs available –more recently on Orla do Guaíba, in Porto Alegre (RS).
