Home Package Delivery and Carbon Impact—Is It as Bad as It Seems?
The answer may surprise you
As we consider personal lifestyles and climate change, I’ve heard many people panning Amazon—and online shopping in general—as a bad thing for the climate. People certainly enjoy the convenience of online shopping—if they didn’t, it wouldn’t be as big as it is. Yet there is a sense that it is indulgent and wasteful at a time when we should be indulging less. We need to generate less carbon overall, and individual package delivery seems very carbon-intensive. And it might be. Or, it might be the exact kind of systemic innovation we need to help solve the problem. Which is it?
The primary criticisms of online shopping come in two areas. First, it is shopping, and therefore an integral part of consumer culture. Online shopping just makes consumption that much easier and so continues to reinforce the very culture that created our carbon problem in the first place. To a large extent, this is true. Amazon is an alternative to Walmart, but both are cathedrals to consumerism. One has warehouses and trucks, the other has trucks and stores. These two companies are emblematic of the bigger cultural picture. Online versus brick and mortar. And yet, they are getting closer and closer to each other. Walmart is also a huge online shopping site, and Amazon has many stores, especially Whole Foods. The categories aren’t as clear as we might think, even though the two still stand as symbols of their dominant methods of business. Both are integral to the consumer culture in the US and elsewhere.
The second big criticism of online shopping is the carbon cost of home delivery. Getting a package from a warehouse to a home is the most expensive part of the delivery process, to be sure, and it is also viewed as the most carbon-expensive part of it, too. Packages are delivered one by one, day by day, directly to your home. As a friend once said, “It’s great! I order something and the next day a nice man brings it to my door! What could be more convenient?” But that also means that fuel is burned to deliver that package, and the more you have delivered, the more fuel is burned and the more carbon is created. It’s like we are going in the wrong direction.
But Let’s Think About This
I'm not sure these criticisms hold true. Consumer culture certainly has a role in our overuse of resources, and it is easy to criticize anything that supports it. On the other hand, retailing, whether online or brick-and-mortar, plays a critical role in getting the products people need to the people who need them. Part of consumer culture is junk, but part of it is also groceries, clothing, home appliances, remodeling and building supplies, and laptop computers—the essential goods of modern life. There is little in these and other essentials that can be "reduced" on an individual basis; we need our food, we need clothing, we need appliances with which to cook, store our food, and warm our homes. All of these items are made accessible to us through retail outlets, whether online or brick-and-mortar. Amazon, in other words, is hardly the problem.
Further, consider this. I live in northern Wisconsin and typically write at a window that overlooks my garden and the road outside. The road has hardly any traffic except for occasional logging trucks and construction vehicles. Also, every day, both UPS and FedEx drive by. Some days they stop at my place and deliver a package I ordered, and some days they do not. But every day, they drive this route.
Seeing this makes me realize a couple of things. First, I'm not the only one among my neighbors taking advantage of online shopping. For us, it is a great advantage because we can easily obtain things that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to procure. We are located thirty miles from the closest Walmart and seventy miles from the closest Home Depot. Certain products that solve certain problems require a drive to those places to find, and if we don’t find them, we either do without or drive further to look for them. Or, we go from store to store looking for someone who will order it for us, only to have them call us in a week when it arrives, and then we have to go back to get it. Thirty miles one way. Thirty miles the other way. Twice.
Now, when we go online, we can get anything we need. For example, when tilling my garden last year the shifting cable broke. I had two choices. One was to load up the tiller, bring it into the shop, let them order the parts and repair it, and then return to the shop a week or two later to pick it up. The shop is thirty miles away. The other was to order the part myself online and fix the thing myself without ever leaving my house. That’s what I chose. And that’s the kind of thing many of my neighbors are choosing as well. We save money, gas, and time. Our personal carbon output is reduced accordingly.
If a hundred of my neighbors avoid two trips a month, the carbon savings begin to add up. Each delivery route, however, serves thousands of households and businesses, and there are thousands of delivery routes. The more people adopt this way of acquiring the goods they need, the more carbon is saved. There is a powerful multiplier at work.
The second realization is this: Because the UPS truck comes by every day, delivery to my home is not a carbon-intensive problem. Quite literally speaking, the incremental carbon emitted to deliver my package results from the gasoline it takes for the truck to come up my 125-foot driveway. All the rest of the fuel burned by that truck is happening anyway, whether something is delivered to my house or not.
If we stand back and look at this systemically, online shopping and home delivery may be exactly the kind of systemic change the economy needs to reduce carbon, rather than the other way around. Our usage of cars, whether electric or traditional, is driven by three distinct needs—the need to get to work and back, the need to meet people for social reasons, and the need to procure the goods we need to live. Home delivery reduces this third use of cars, in some cases quite substantially, and therefore the carbon emissions associated with traditional retail procurement of the goods we need.
There is another benefit, as well. Consumers have been slow to convert to emissions-free technology like electric vehicles despite their many benefits. Delivery companies, however, have not. Amazon and UPS are adopting electric delivery trucks much more quickly than consumers. Amazon has over 10,000 electric delivery vans. UPS has over 13,000 electric and alternative fuel vehicles. FedEx is behind but has a big goal and push to adopt similar vehicles within the next seven years. As these companies go electric and the sources of electric generation move from coal to renewables, overall emissions from delivery will decrease even further. Plus, as more consumers choose to use these services for home delivery, more consumer driving for shopping and procurement will be reduced.
Enhancing the Climate Abundant Life
Our typical trips to the store for items we purchase will increasingly be replaced by consumers shopping online and having delivery to our homes. Even today, when most of the delivery fleet uses fossil fuels, this is a benefit on emissions as we have seen. While we pay for delivery through shipping fees or Amazon Prime, we save money on the gasoline we don’t have to buy. The longer your drive for shopping and procuring goods, the more the savings will be. Quality of life is improved by saving time and slowing the frenetic pace of our lives.
From a carbon perspective, the delivery routes become a part of the core operation of the economy. They represent a baseline of carbon production for running the fleet, but one that is being reduced through electrification. That baseline will be there whether any individual uses it or not. The delivery vans come by my home every day, whether they stop at my place or not. That's the baseline. Having them stop and make a delivery produces far less carbon than my thirty-mile drive to a town where I can look for things that may or may not be available, and then drive back. The same will be true for most people who don't do all their shopping on foot or with public transportation.
Here's what systemic change looks like. First, we move to a more efficient home delivery system. Then, consumers adopt the innovation because of convenience and cost savings. People drive less, reducing carbon emissions from the use of their vehicles. The delivery system establishes an expected floor of economic activity and carbon emissions—that’s the truck fleet on their routes every day. That floor of carbon emissions is reduced by going electric first, and then by reducing the carbon emissions from electricity generation. This happens as the electric system eliminates fossil fuels from its electricity generation portfolio, thus eliminating carbon emissions from the activity altogether. For many, it will eventually become the gluttonous and time-consuming choice to drive to stores when the much more carbon-efficient home delivery option is available.
So, to answer my title's question: No, package delivery is not bad for carbon reduction. It is actually better. It is the systemic change we need to solve a particular human problem—the procurement of goods we need to live while generating less carbon. Even today, it is far better than driving your own car.
Anthony Signorelli
If you like this newsletter, please subscribe or upgrade so we can continue explorng the Climate Abundant Life together. Thanks!