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Comment by tempsy | Hacker News Reader

I’m not sure what the research says but is buying something online (+ one day shipping) more or less environmentally friendly than going to a store?

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I bought a pencil sharpener on Amazon this past Saturday and selected next day free Prime shipping. The shipping notification I got on Sunday was that my package was scheduled delivery number 126 for this one driver. If that's normal, then it sounds a lot more efficient than me driving to the store and back for one item.

It's probably better because the delivery trucks can make multiple stops. Chances are that when they deliver something to you, they are making multiple stops in the area. And the delivery companies put a huge amount of computational power into optimizing routes and making sure they don't drive any further than they need to.

And you think those items on the shelf at the store were delivered by trucks one at a time?

Being on a shelf at the store doesn't help that much, I think. Most of what I buy gets delivered in one trip out and back... by me.

The people going to store almost certainly went in cars one at a time. Although some large portion probably combined it with other errands.

Amazon: Factory > Warehouse > Delivery Driver > You

B&M Store: Factory > Warehouse > Store > You

Obviously that's generalizing quite a bit, but intuitively it seems that the major difference is the final step. On average a delivery driver is more efficient than you making a trip for just yourself.

I suspect there big environmental impact will be any changes in the quantity of things we buy, moreso than if we drive to the store or not.

It depends, where is this hypothetical person living? I live in the middle of a city, the store close to me serves the thousands of people living in my square kilometer. Because of scale, the truck that transports new goods to the store has a low carbon emission per customer.

I have friends who live way out of town. If they have a store it serves maybe twenty people. Instead of dividing the truck’s emissions by thousands of people you just divide it by twenty.

There's also the consideration that by living in a city you likely live closer to an airport or transportation hub, so the last leg of any shipped goods (in a semi truck and/or delivery vehicle) is going to be shorter as well.

If someone has to get in their car at all to go to the shops I would say it is likely to be more carbon intensive than a delivery service with high utilisation. A shopping center in general would be generating a lot more emissions per product than a warehouse.

On the other side often things bought online come with a lot more packaging. I think Amazon is trying to cut down on this by having suppliers where possible use a box for a product that is durable enough for shipping without having to put it in another box.

I don't think it's that simple, because the frequency of the shipments and amount of goods shipped would also decrease (although not linearly) since there are less people to account for. If both systems are equally optimized, would there be a difference?

That said, in practice the "economy of scale" argument still applies and the inner-city store will overwhelming produce less carbon, besides the fact that a rural area may imply an increase in the distance good are shipped.

It mostly depends on the cost of the last mile (or last 5 miles).

In a dense city, most of the last mile will be served by foot walking to a store which would have lower emissions (zero) compared to a delivery vehicle.

In the suburbs, the last mile to a store will likely be a detour by car from wherever you wanted to be. So delivery probably has a smaller footprint than storefronts (since the delivery vehicle is likely doing deliveries nearby anyway).

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