This Food Delivery Service Is Ditching Smog-Spewing Cars for Tricycles
Don’t feel like leaving your house for a tub of hummus and a box of crackers? Nowadays food delivery services are more than willing to step in and drive a few snacks (or a whole order of organic groceries) directly to your front door. But Amsterdam-based startup Foodlogica is out to provide convenience without spewing pollutants in the air. That’s why it's ditched traditional delivery cars and vans for electric-powered tricycles.
It gets better: Along with committing to zero-emissions transport, Foodlogica, which launched a small pilot in June and expanded its service across the notoriously congested downtown section of the Dutch capital in September, has also committed to only using local food producers and sellers. To that end, it’s primarily working to connect the fruits and vegetables produced by local farmers in the region with consumers in the city.
Given the air pollution plaguing Europe, the effort comes right on time and smartly harnesses the growing popularity of two-wheeled transportation to solve smog problems on the continent. France has recently experimented with paying people to bike to work and Sweden has subsidized bike coaches for its citizens.
According to the company's website the tricycles are charged overnight using off-grid solar power. During the day that energy allows a Foodlogica employee to “bike” about 62 miles to get cargo into Amsterdam. A tricycle’s cargo bin can hold a substantial 600 pounds of food. Given that capacity, while Foodlogica could certainly deliver a bunch of carrots and some kale to individual households, connecting restaurants and grocery stories located in the notoriously congested center of the city looks like a more likely goal.
The company is the first project launched from the Farming the City Campaign of Amsterdam’s CITIES Foundation. According to the foundation’s website, it “incubates, promotes, and scales urban innovations.” Indeed, while Foodlogica is only getting started, a bike- or tricycle-based food delivery service is certainly an environmentally responsible idea that would work in plenty of cities, especially if all you're ordering is crackers and hummus.
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Original article from TakePart
