You don’t often hear farmer’s markets compared to online grocery shopping, but New Seasons’ home delivery service brings some of the sustainable virtues of the farmer’s market online.

Convenience – not sustainability – is what usually comes to mind when you think of online grocery shopping. But when New Seasons Market launched its home delivery service last year it also set out to quantify its environmental benefits.

Not surprisingly, New Seasons focused on carbon emissions from its delivery vehicles, concluding that its home delivery vans, fueled with a biodiesel-blend, have the potential to save 9.9 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year compared to customers driving to the store in a standard family sedan.

That’s very impressive, but I think this is really just the tip of the iceberg. What’s not accounted for in this test are the environmental benefits of purchasing organic and locally grown products from New Seasons INSTEAD of products from another market.

This would be obvious if you were shopping at a farmer’s market instead of shopping at your local grocery store. It’s not as readily apparent when you look at online grocery shopping so let me explain.

I wish I could say that I always shop at New Seasons, but the truth is that I can’t afford to. I try to split my shopping between two markets – one for the stuff where price is most important and another – like New Seasons - for the stuff I want to make sure is fresh, wholesome and healthy.

The problem with this approach is that when I’m short on time and can’t squeeze in trips to two markets, all too often I end up skipping my trip to New Seasons. And that means I miss out on all that fresh, healthy, organic and locally grown stuff – and so does the environment.

But fitting in the “virtual” trip to New Seasons doesn’t mean much, if I’m not making more sustainable food choices. And that’s where I see New Seasons’ website as a modern day proxy for the farmer’s market.

New Seasons does an especially good job on its website of surfacing products that are “homegrown” (Oregon, Washington and Northern California) or organic. Of course, these products are also highlighted in their stores. However, I was surprised at how much more noticeable they are online, perhaps because the small tags in stores can get lost among dozens of the same product on a shelf.

When life gets busy it’s hard to find the time to get to the right grocer. It’s also hard to think about buying local and buying organic. Shopping online doesn’t have to be all about convenience – it can also be about better choices, the kind of choices you don’t always have the time to make.

So if you want to live a little more technically green, try out New Seasons home delivery and choose locally grown and organic food products.

Bon appetite!