Online shopping slowing, has higher environmental costs than driving to store
Piles of cardboard and fleets of delivery trucks are changing the environmental equation of retail.
Best Buy’s, Dick’s E-Commerce Growth Slows After Pandemic-Fueled Surge
Online-sales gains cool from year ago when many mall stores were shut; inventory issues squeeze other chains
Best Buy said e-commerce sales fell 11% in the latest quarter from a year earlier when they had surged 174% as temporary store closures during the pandemic caused many customers to shop online.
Nov. 23, 2021 10:18 am ET
Online shopping can be worse for the environment than driving to a store
New York (CNN Business)If you think shopping online is more eco-friendly than driving to a store, think again.
It may sound counterintuitive, but the more eco-conscious way to shop is going to a physical store rather than by making purchases online from companies that don't have physical stores, according to a new report Tuesday in Environmental Science & Technology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Chemical Society.
In the study, researchers estimated that shopping at brick-and-mortar stores for frequently bought items such as toilet paper, shampoo and toothpaste, often results in less greenhouse gas emissions than ordering the products from a company that only sells through the internet.
The main reason is because of how people shop online: Many buy items online frequently -- but they only buy a few items per purchase.
"When they shop in a store, they aggregate these purchases in a single bulk purchase," noted Sadegh Shahmohammadi, a PhD student in Environmental Science at Radboud University in the Netherlands. He's one of six researchers who worked on the year-and-a-half long study.
Frequent online purchases produce more packaging waste, and online items tend to come from different distribution centers. Both factors result in higher greenhouse gas emissions per item, said Shahmohammadi.
The team modeled their research on the movement of goods from the factory all the way through to the end consumer.
Shopping online surged during Covid. Now the environmental costs are becoming clearer.
Piles of cardboard and fleets of delivery trucks are changing the environmental equation of retail.
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As millions of Americans hunkered at home during Covid lockdowns, the internet became more than a way to do their jobs or pass the time — it became a central way they shopped for goods like groceries, hot meals, furniture and clothing.
The pandemic, in effect, hit overdrive on a decadeslong shift toward online shopping. E-commerce sales jumped nearly 32 percent in 2020 compared to the prior year, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. So far this year, online sales are on track to outpace that record. To meet the demand, delivery companies such as Amazon, FedEx, UPS and food delivery services wrapped millions of purchases in layers of cardboard and plastic and hired thousands of new drivers to bring them to our doorsteps.
politico.com/news/2021/11/18/covid-retail-e-commerce-environment-522786
