We live in a world where online shopping has become an essential part of our lives.
I’m sure we all love shopping, and especially, online shopping as it can be very convenient. If you have young children and don’t have time to go shopping or if you don’t drive, having things come right to your doorstep is super ideal. Not only does it come right to your house, but if you pay for fast shipping it will be there in less than three days. It’s also convenient for buyers that don’t want to waste gas, when they can just order without having to go out.
Still, it seems like we don’t talk about the negative effects online shopping has on the environment. According to NEMS , containers and packaging make up about 30% of all municipal solid waste and a good amount comes from online shopping.
There are times where a person orders something small and gets excessive packaging that wasn’t necessary. Delivery companies such as FedEx, Amazon, or UPS wrap packages extra well to make sure nothing is damaged on the way to the consumer’s house.
Ordering something fragile online can be nerve racking, and you hope it gets to your house in one piece, but how does that affect the environment?
All forms of packaging requires a certain amount of energy and resources to manufacture. Manufacturing these packages emit greenhouse gasses that are harmful to our environment. They produce heavy metal particles or even dump toxic waste into the waters. About 25% of global plastic waste is due to packaging.
Also, many people tend to return things more, when they order online due to the fact that they cannot try things on or they do not know exactly how an item looks in person. According to Packaging World , approximately 40% of online orders are returned. These things wouldn’t happen if people just went to the stores in person.
As stated by the forest conversation group Canopy, three billion trees are destroyed each year to be able to produce 241 million shipping cartons. Not even 14% of the 86 million cartons produced are recycled.
We all know how long the process works, when you check your delivery status. How many steps it goes through just to get to your house can be hard to understand.
The transport of goods is a major contribution of CO2 emissions generated by e-commerce, according to EarthOrg From personal experience, I’m always anxious and impatient waiting for my package. Just going to buy it in person would be easier for nerves.
Many would say that online shopping and having things delivered is super convenient, especially for people who are busy, and don’t have the time to do these types of things. I can totally understand that argument, but society is not aware (or perhaps does not care) of the harm we cause to the environment by online shopping. Potentially, our environment will never improve and will just become worse.
During COVID, people depended on the internet for many things like jobs, but also for shopping for goods. As claimed by MIT E-commerce sales increased 32% during the pandemic. Not only did E-commerce become very popular during COVID, but society got used to it and now uses it all the time.
It’s important for people to know the cause and effect of things and to keep that into consideration. So next time you want to order something online or deliver groceries, do it in person because the environment will thank you.
