I found this great article at the New York Times website:
When shopping, is it greener to order off the Internet or drive to the mall?
The answer — at least for those patronizing Buy.com — is the Internet, says a new study from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University.
The study compared the energy use — and emissions — of ordering items on Buy.com, versus shopping at actual brick-and-mortar retailers.
Shoppers sitting in their living rooms and ordering items like hair-dryers or cameras online used 35 percent less energy, the study found, than people who shopped the old-fashioned way.
“Customer transport” — in other words, driving to and from the mall — accounted for 65 percent of energy and emissions from the brick-and-mortar shopping method. (The study recognized, however, that factors like driving distance and gas mileage can vary significantly.)
Buy.com has a business model that differs from some online competitors like Amazon: it ships products directly from wholesalers to the customer, without aggregating goods in a way-station warehouse owned by the company.
Bypassing a warehouse can save energy, since there is no need to light, heat or cool a giant space. For Internet shopping, the main sources of energy use besides warehouses is the truck that takes the packages the final mile to their destination, followed by the energy used in packaging the goods. The energy needs of data centers were relatively small.
The study was not funded by Buy.com, according to a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon and one of the authors of the study. But the university’s Green Design Institute, which conducted the research, does have a relationship with the company, which is part of its “corporate consortium.” This means that Carnegie researchers regularly exchange data, analysis and ideas with Buy.com.
Of course, one could probably save even more energy — at least in cities and towns — by walking or taking mass transit to the store. Or by not shopping at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment