Increased use of airplanes is one factor in why US greenhouse gas emissions grew last year after years of decline: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/1/11/1817711...
Amazon is effectively just replacing UPS / FedEx. In the long run, the net result to society is the same whether UPS, FedEx or Amazon flies the plane (assuming every plane operates at the same capacity and have equal fuel efficiency). The pollution from these planes is a function of how much people shop online, not which company flies the plane.
Amazon ships by rail already. I see Amazon Prime-branded trailers on flatbed rail cars tearing across the country all the time. And the number of Prime-branded tractor trailers I see on the highways between cities has grown exponentially in the last year or so.
Of course that's not really Amazon's problem. We really need more reasonable taxes on fossil fuels that make it cost-prohibitive for Amazon to rely on air shipping.
Very much so. It's a big factor in enabling "we don't have to own a car at all, because we can get anything we need shipped to us". 2-day shipping is the slow case these days, and if it's in a local warehouse you can expect same-day or next-day. (And in some cities you can get 2-hour delivery of fresh items.)
If you're going to fairly compare the emissions involved in package delivery, you'd need to take increased car usage into account, among many other things.
You can also safely assume that the cost of air freight is amortized across a large number of packages. And in general, Amazon tries to predict what will be needed in advance, so that they can ship it to a local warehouse via slower methods. The planes are, effectively, for the case where they didn't anticipate demand and it's too expensive an item to keep that much distributed inventory of.
Maybe, but my own experience is a counterexample. I'm a bike commuter who doesn't own a car, and I cancelled Prime because I found Prime's shipping to be unreliable at best. (Late deliveries, mostly.) If I need to order something I'll wait until I meet the minimum for free shipping or pay extra for shipping. Online shopping is the game changer, not Prime, as far as I'm concerned.
Since I started using Amazon it's gotten really hard for me to justify driving to a place like Fry's because they almost never have exactly what I need, and usually what they do have is hot garbage. The resellers on Amazon frequently stock exactly what I need at pretty good prices and I can usually get it same day or next day. And if I need a technical book or something I usually buy it off Amazon too because other than maybe the university library(10 miles away) there's nobody who stocks the kind of books I need to do my job.
Most of the stuff I get from Amazon I can probably get from Digikey or Mouser as well. I usually only order from Digikey when I need a very specific part. Amazon is where I order things like bulk LEDs, resistors, solderable breadboards, wire, and other consumables. And usually they have a great selection of tools as well.
I'm curious, are you located near one of Amazon's primary areas (namely, those areas where they offer Prime Now 2-hour delivery)? I get the distinct impression that the service quality is very different depending on if you're in such an area or not.
I've mainly had issues with getting deliveries to the apartments I've lived in. I'm not certain that the problem was Amazon. It could have been that the carriers thought they could get away with claiming I wasn't home when I was, etc. I recall once that UPS or FedEx told me that they didn't want to deliver to my address and I'd have to go to a location in north Austin to pick up my package. I eventually convinced them to do their job and deliver the package. Another time I got a note from USPS telling me to pick it up from a specific post office, which I tried to do, but it wasn't there and was actually out for delivery again then as far as I recall. I decided that I'm not going to play these games.
When I started getting delivery to my work address (which always has a person there to accept packages during business hours), the situation improved, but was not solved. Work doesn't like personal deliveries and this limits the size of items I can get.
I made it clear to Amazon that they need to improve the reliability of their carriers if they want me as a customer. Amazon's statistics suggest my experience is quite rare, though, assuming those numbers are true.
Once, I tried an Amazon locker, but the locker wouldn't open for me and I had to get a human to fetch the package. I would start to think that I'm on some internal Amazon shit list, but I later ordered a $100 electronic item from Amazon with Prime and it didn't come in on time (delivery to my work) so they refunded me fully. I think the problem for that package again wasn't Amazon's fault. I assumed the package was lost and wouldn't be coming in, but after about a week the package appeared. Amazon said keep it for free even though I was willing to pay again. That's nice of them, but I think I've lost more than $100 worth of my time trying to chase various packages over the years so I'm still at a loss as far as I'm concerned.
This wasn't the first time I had issues with Prime's delivery. When I lived in the DC metro area shortly after Prime started, Prime would us a local carrier called "LaserShip" that was so bad that I decided to cancel Prime so I could get a normal carrier instead. Prime was a downgrade as far as I'm concerned. Everything I've read about LaserShip online matches my experience.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaserShip#Package_tossing_and_...
And more awareness among consumers - how often do we need same day/next day delivery? I bet not that often
It would be nice for consumers to support local businesses instead of always buying from mega corporations...
The EPA + Taxes (of various kinds) are how companies/individuals pay for environmental damage, and it's also how companies/individuals pay to protect the environment.
Cleanups use tax money, research into potential regulations to minimize impact uses tax money, etc.
So it's not some kind of outlandish idea, but at the moment the EPA is REALLY buddy/buddy with large companies so they're currently effectively neutered.
If you do, make sure to offset that with: (1) the reduction in retail space use for products, (2) the reduced amount of cars on the road, etc. etc.
That would be wonderful.
> That would be wonderful.
Given the number of prime subscribers, most of the US disagrees with you. 2 day shipping is simply not going to happen on rail.
This is true.
However, Amazon wants "2 day shipping" to be 2 day shipping, not probably 2 day shipping, which means they need to deal with the long tail of orders.
And for that, you need airplanes.
According to the IPCC, CO2 emissions are only 1/4-1/2 of aviation's impact on climate change. In 1999 they estimated the total impact as 3.5%, and projected out what will happen as aviation use increases, which it has.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviati...
Plus the conversion to natural gas has flattened out. Methane is 40% less carbon per BTU than coal. But it still creates considerable CO2.