A few years ago when I was working on creating new advertising ideas for Comcast, I had my heart set on a whole “green” themed campaign. I was so psyched for it, and although I now forget whatever witty headlines I had came up, the gist of the campaign would be that with Comcast’s services, a family could live a full life without necessarily leaving their house, thereby drastically cutting back their gas usage and CO2 emissions caused from driving all over.
My reasoning was that with the fancy cable package du jour, you could have all sorts of unique experiences in the comfort of your own living room. The phone package would enable you to “visit” with friends and family across the country whenever you wanted, and the Internet connection (amongst other benefits) could allow you to shop away to your heart’s content while remaining in your pj’s and avoiding all annoying sales associates. To me, the idea that individual people could significantly reduce their carbon foot-print by cutting back on their amount of required driving was crux to helping better the environment. Every little bit does help, but oh, how naïve I was…
True—a phone call to California is less demanding on all resources than a plan ride there, and a Miley concert viewed OnDemand is easier to palate than a real life concert (kids are happy, parents can avoid tween nightmares by secluding themselves in another room), but through further consideration it became clear to me that online shopping is absolutely no gift to the environment.
It made me feel a little bit better to know that I was not the only one previously duped by the “green” online shopping mirage. "Consumers aren't used to thinking about e-commerce having any environmental impact," H. Scott Matthews, the research director of Carnegie Mellon's Green Design Initiative says. "When people buy things online, they're not necessarily thinking about what's happening; it's almost like the item is being teleported from the warehouse to their doorstep. The fact that you aren't going to the store doesn't mean there's no environmental impact. In some cases, it's much worse."
The dark side of online shopping was recently rubbed in my face so painfully it makes me cringe just thinking about it.
A few months ago, it was decided that my sister was going to have a summer destination wedding. In preparation, she went hog-wild buying bikinis for her honeymoon online at Victoria’s Secret. Since bathing suits are tricky when it comes to fit, her plan of attack was to just buy every bathing suit that she liked-- and then send back whatever didn't fit.
Once the order was placed, (some $700 later,) she began receiving notifications that some of the pieces were back-ordered and wouldn’t come for another few weeks. Since the wedding was months away at that point, a few weeks didn’t matter to her and she didn’t really think anything more of it.
Until... the packages started arriving. At first it was exciting to get packages, a top one day, a pair of bottoms two days later. However, the excitement quickly transitioned into annoyance when it became obvious that her order had been splintered up into oblivion, with the poor UPS man being forced to make unknown amounts of trips down our driveway to drop off her bikini bits and pieces.
A month later, she is still receiving forgotten parcels here and there.
The inefficiency and waste that occurred with this drove me nuts, and made me start to think about online shopping in a much grander scheme. Things that we buy do not just magically appear at our doors-- a lot of stuff goes on behind the scenes that we don’t even know or think about, which are in turn responsible for creating a ton of waste and pollution. Maybe shopping at a brick and mortar store is better?
The alleged beauty of online shopping, from an environmental perspective, is that it is supposed to be super efficient. Instead of separate cars driving back and forth to do individual household shopping, one UPS truck with a well-planned delivery schedule can drop off dozens of packages along its one daily route. Obviously, if deliveries go according to this plan a lot of things are happily reduced; like fuel, time, and pollution. Unfortunately, life is not like a delivery van, and does not always follow its desired course-- as witnessed with my sister and her 1 order that came in 20 separate pieces.
In addition to the pollution created by all modes of shipping transportation, (and I’m not even going to fully delve into the effects of airplane pollution, as there are so many variables to consider, but for brevity’s sake-- the pollution caused by airplanes for shipping purposes totally negates any environmental good the most perfect of perfect perfect delivery van system might produce.) there is also the waste that is produced from the accumulated packaging materials that are required for shipping. The added weight of the packaging adds up, and thus requires inflated gas needs for transportation, in order to ultimately end up in a trash-can after reaching its final destination. In the end, my sister could have covered more of her body with Victoria Secret packaging than Victoria Secret swim-wear.
Obviously, this entire online shopping ordeal would be a lot better if everything had come all at once—one trip to our house, one box for everything. However, considering the diaspora of a delivery situation that arose, Mother Nature would have been far better off had my sister just gone to the good old fashioned mall.
In an ideal world, online shopping, where one person essentially delivers the goods, is better than droves of people driving all around. In a realistic world, buying in bulk, walking (if you can), and carrying reusable bags are all good ways to green up your shopping. Save the online shopping for the really important things in life, like killer Jimmy Choos on eBay.
My reasoning was that with the fancy cable package du jour, you could have all sorts of unique experiences in the comfort of your own living room. The phone package would enable you to “visit” with friends and family across the country whenever you wanted, and the Internet connection (amongst other benefits) could allow you to shop away to your heart’s content while remaining in your pj’s and avoiding all annoying sales associates. To me, the idea that individual people could significantly reduce their carbon foot-print by cutting back on their amount of required driving was crux to helping better the environment. Every little bit does help, but oh, how naïve I was…
True—a phone call to California is less demanding on all resources than a plan ride there, and a Miley concert viewed OnDemand is easier to palate than a real life concert (kids are happy, parents can avoid tween nightmares by secluding themselves in another room), but through further consideration it became clear to me that online shopping is absolutely no gift to the environment.
It made me feel a little bit better to know that I was not the only one previously duped by the “green” online shopping mirage. "Consumers aren't used to thinking about e-commerce having any environmental impact," H. Scott Matthews, the research director of Carnegie Mellon's Green Design Initiative says. "When people buy things online, they're not necessarily thinking about what's happening; it's almost like the item is being teleported from the warehouse to their doorstep. The fact that you aren't going to the store doesn't mean there's no environmental impact. In some cases, it's much worse."
The dark side of online shopping was recently rubbed in my face so painfully it makes me cringe just thinking about it.A few months ago, it was decided that my sister was going to have a summer destination wedding. In preparation, she went hog-wild buying bikinis for her honeymoon online at Victoria’s Secret. Since bathing suits are tricky when it comes to fit, her plan of attack was to just buy every bathing suit that she liked-- and then send back whatever didn't fit.
Once the order was placed, (some $700 later,) she began receiving notifications that some of the pieces were back-ordered and wouldn’t come for another few weeks. Since the wedding was months away at that point, a few weeks didn’t matter to her and she didn’t really think anything more of it.
Until... the packages started arriving. At first it was exciting to get packages, a top one day, a pair of bottoms two days later. However, the excitement quickly transitioned into annoyance when it became obvious that her order had been splintered up into oblivion, with the poor UPS man being forced to make unknown amounts of trips down our driveway to drop off her bikini bits and pieces.
A month later, she is still receiving forgotten parcels here and there.
The inefficiency and waste that occurred with this drove me nuts, and made me start to think about online shopping in a much grander scheme. Things that we buy do not just magically appear at our doors-- a lot of stuff goes on behind the scenes that we don’t even know or think about, which are in turn responsible for creating a ton of waste and pollution. Maybe shopping at a brick and mortar store is better?
The alleged beauty of online shopping, from an environmental perspective, is that it is supposed to be super efficient. Instead of separate cars driving back and forth to do individual household shopping, one UPS truck with a well-planned delivery schedule can drop off dozens of packages along its one daily route. Obviously, if deliveries go according to this plan a lot of things are happily reduced; like fuel, time, and pollution. Unfortunately, life is not like a delivery van, and does not always follow its desired course-- as witnessed with my sister and her 1 order that came in 20 separate pieces.
In addition to the pollution created by all modes of shipping transportation, (and I’m not even going to fully delve into the effects of airplane pollution, as there are so many variables to consider, but for brevity’s sake-- the pollution caused by airplanes for shipping purposes totally negates any environmental good the most perfect of perfect perfect delivery van system might produce.) there is also the waste that is produced from the accumulated packaging materials that are required for shipping. The added weight of the packaging adds up, and thus requires inflated gas needs for transportation, in order to ultimately end up in a trash-can after reaching its final destination. In the end, my sister could have covered more of her body with Victoria Secret packaging than Victoria Secret swim-wear.
Obviously, this entire online shopping ordeal would be a lot better if everything had come all at once—one trip to our house, one box for everything. However, considering the diaspora of a delivery situation that arose, Mother Nature would have been far better off had my sister just gone to the good old fashioned mall.
In an ideal world, online shopping, where one person essentially delivers the goods, is better than droves of people driving all around. In a realistic world, buying in bulk, walking (if you can), and carrying reusable bags are all good ways to green up your shopping. Save the online shopping for the really important things in life, like killer Jimmy Choos on eBay.
I love this post and have to admit that I dont spend nearly enough time considering my footprint when online shopping, although I do recycle the cardboard boxes.
ReplyDeleteIs that a real photo?