More and more people are buying products online. With the COVID-19 pandemic, this trend only increased. Online retail sales in 2020 increased with 32,4% compared to 2019 [1]. Statista estimated that in 2021, more than 2.1 billion people worldwide are shopping online [2]. E-commerce has a lot of advantages for both consumers and retailers. Retailers can reach more consumers and those consumers have the convenience of ordering products without leaving their homes. But how does online shopping affect the environment?
If you look at the basic principles, online shopping is more environmentally friendly than buying products in a store. The main reason for this is that individuals don’t have to drive to stores to get their products [3], but that they are being delivered by vans which can optimize their routes for other customers. Next to that, less physical stores also mean less energy needed to power those buildings.
However, online shopping is not all rainbows and sunshine. The last years, retailers have focused on improving their last-mile delivery – the journey from the store or distribution center to the customer. Free shipping or same day delivery are being offered by more and more retailers nowadays. This rat race to make online shopping as convenient as possible, has a negative environmental impact. Customers order fewer items per online transaction leading to more shipment movements. Also, multi-item orders are often split because they have to be shipped from multiple stores or distribution centers and shipping via e-commerce requires additional packing [3]. Returns make things even worse. More than 30% of products bought online are returned, compared to just 9% in physical stores [4]. This new style of shopping not only leads to more parcels that need to be shipped back, but it also causes unnecessary waste of unused and undamaged products. Reports show that over 25% of returns are destroyed immediately, especially within the clothing industry [5]. Amazon destroys millions of items in their UK warehouses each year [6]. It’s often cheaper for companies to just destroy the returns instead of sorting out what’s wrong and repacking them, but the environment is paying the price.
Of course, you can still order products online. And if you keep some simple things in mind you can still have a smaller environmental impact compared to physical shopping. Below you can find some of these remarks, but feel free to add additional ones in the comments!
- If you can buy your product in a physical store which you can reach walking or cycling, just go to the store.
- If you’re unsure if the size is correct or if you want to keep the product, go to a physical store and find out.
- Try to bundle your (future) purchases in one order.
References
- [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/251666/number-of-digital-buyers-worldwide/
- [2] https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/article/coronavirus-impact-online-retail/
- [3] https://eco-age.com/resources/online-shopping-impact-on-environment/
- [4] https://www.invespcro.com/blog/ecommerce-product-return-rate-statistics/
- [5] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/10/growing-online-sales-means-more-returns-and-trash-for-landfills.html
- [6] https://www.itv.com/news/2021-06-21/amazon-destroying-millions-of-items-of-unsold-stock-in-one-of-its-uk-warehouses-every-year-itv-news-investigation-finds