What’s the full carbon footprint of buying X on line, versus driving to a store to get it? (Pick your own values for the variables. I’m just curious about the sensitivity analysis.)
jfleck at inkstain
A few thoughts from John Fleck, a writer of journalism and other things, living in New Mexico
To first order zilch. The things had to get to the store somehow or it gets sent to you somehow. You can play games about the supply chain, the amount of heat and light in the store etc.
I assume one UPS truck delivering dozens of packages to a neighborhood is more efficient than everyone in that neighborhood driving to a shopping center and then driving back, and that the rest of the shipping process is roughly a wash (in many cases these days the store is also being supplied by UPS) but I really don’t know; would love to see better numbers on it.
Whether you’re talking home delivery or driving to the store, there’s probably more savings to be had by consolidating your orders. Just as we’re learning to combine our shopping trips into a single drive, it helps to not have Amazon send out your stuff in multiple orders.
One box, one trip will probably make the most difference.
Here’s a really useful story on issue:
http://www.grist.org/biz/tp/2006/05/23/shipping/
Having just finished writing my third book of 2008, I’m sifting through items I meant to blog, but never got to. 😉
Thought about the UPS issue, but the last mile is but a thousandth of how far the item has travelled, most likely a ten thousandth.