Special Delivery!: Sustainable Urban Transportation for Sustainable Food

The bike craze has hit some cities harder than others, just as the local, sustainable food movement is more ingrained in certain regions. Places like Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington, and Madison, Wisconsin, among others, have made a permanent place for bicycles as transportation. And not just transportation for commuters, but increasingly the transportation of, well, just about anything. Specially designed cargo bikes make toting heavy loads a relatively easy way to decrease carbon emissions while providing delivery service. Now several bike delivery companies are expanding in creative ways to include the delivery of sustainable food, increasing food security in cities and making the local, urban food systems more sustainable.

In the food and bike-centric small city of Burlington, Vermont, the recently launched ONE Revolution bike delivery has hooked up with area CSA farms. Every week, ONE Revolution riders pick up shares of local, sustainable foods in cargo boxes specially made for food delivery, designed to keep veggies well-ventilated and fresh. They then drop shares off at various locations throughout Burlington to be picked up by customers. Voila! Truly environmentally sustainable delivery, at your service.

Of course, you do have to pay a pretty penny for the run-of-the-mill CSA share, and perhaps even slightly more when local farmers are partnering with bike delivery services. If you can afford it, CSAs via bike are a great step up towards an even more responsible local food system. However, if you can't afford a CSA share, or local, sustainable food in general, there are  some new bike-powered options for linking food to mouth.

B-Line is a Portland, Oregon based bike delivery service which recently expanded it's usual delivery service to include a new branch of sustainable food delivery. Looking for a way to bridge the gap between wasted food and hungry people, B-Line create B-Shares, which provides pick-up and transportation for local food purveyors to get unused food to area non-profits that address hunger issues. Fresh, organic food is picked up in a timely manner from Whole Foods, local co-ops and farmer's markets,  and transported directly to soup kitchens and other hunger outreach programs by bike. This delivery comes at no cost to the already over-extended non-profits that would otherwise need to devote staff and fuel money to food transportation. Instead, the funding comes from donors who pay $20 for a B-Share. One B-Share translates directly into enough money to provide 40 meals! With food insecurity on the rise nationwide, that's no small contribution, and hopefully models like the one the B-Share presents will begin to catch on elsewhere.

As we look to the future and envision more decentralized, localized economies, as well as the eventual end of everyday fossil fuel use, new models for food transportation serve as a source of inspiration. Yes, these are hyper-local, urban models, that probably wouldn't work in a more rural setting. But both of these bicycle delivery services connect the dots to build more environmentally friendly, and truly sustainable food systems, working to cut down on emissions as well as hunger. The fact that these two companies can make it happen, means that it can blossom elsewhere, in other forms, an perhaps already has. Although we need big solutions for our many big problems, these small ones are pretty amazing too.