GreenYour.com

Online shopping is fast becoming popular with people of all ages as selection and convenience increases and shipping prices fall. The debate over the eco-friendliness of e-commerce purchasing rages on, so a little common sense and discretion are necessary. But under the right circumstances, shopping online can make your next shopping trip a little greener.

How to shop online

Online shopping can cut the energy, paper, and other resources used to produce that new iPod or organic cotton sheet set you're coveting. But to make your online purchase as green as can be, follow these simple guidelines:

• Choose top-rated companies: Climate Counts has rated many big corporations in the US for their environmental records, including several consumer shipping businesses. Check out their logistics company ratings to select the greenest delivery option around.

• Double-up: If you’ve got the option to have your shipment sent in separate bundles (as things become available), don’t! This requires more packaging and multiple fossil-fuel-intensive delivery trips.

• Trust e-receipts: Opt to save your e-receipt in a safe electronic location rather than printing it out. Save the paper and avoid further forest destruction.

• Avoid impatient overnighting: Plan ahead so that you don’t have to have those new organic bamboo towels or soot-free candles rushed to their destination. Since air shipping is energy-intensive, choose the longest, slowest shipping method to make your purchase the most eco-friendly it can be.

• Shop at work: Whether you work in an office or out of your home, be sure to have your packages sent to the location where you'll likely be during the day. This way delivery folks won’t have to make multiple attempts to drop off your packages.

• Recycle packaging: Whatever you do, don’t throw out the packaging that came with your purchase. If you can’t recycle it, save it for future mailings to your eccentric Aunt Mary.

• Check out GreenYour’s listings: Shopping online is a great way to green your shopping, but using a green online vendor is even better! GreenYour.com has hundreds of products and services listed— food, clothing, appliances, electronics, and more—all with a green angle, so you can browse knowing that your shopping choices and shopping methods are really green.

When NOT to buy online

Online shopping isn’t the best choice in every situation, so take these factors into consideration before clicking “Submit order.”

• Found locally: Yes, a long-distance, single-occupancy, single-transaction car ride expends a disproportionately large amount of CO₂ per purchase, but what if you’re able to get some great stuff near your home? Go for it! If you can walk, ride your bike, make short car-pool trips, or take public transit to pick up your favorite shampoo or the next big Grisham novel, you’ll probably produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions than if you were to order the same items online.

• Locally made: Inherently, online shopping is more global than local, which means you forgo the benefits of buying from small businesses located nearby when you shop online. The eco-impacts of a local soap artisan, clothing designer, or veggie grower may be far less than your average e-commerce business, especially if the company’s independently-owned (i.e. not a franchise) and the materials are locally-sourced. So, if you’re pondering a choice between two similar products, one available online and one made and sold close to home, go for the local option.

• Packaging hog: If you know a particular online store to be notorious for over-packaging its products, consider doing business elsewhere. Sending an email explaining your choice may prompt the vendor to mend its ways, too.

Before you buy

Green claims may not mean real-life eco-friendly products, so dig a little to be sure your online purchase is truly green. A recent study by TerraChoice Environmental Marketing found that of the 1,018 products examined, all but one committed at least a few sins of greenwashing in their attempt to convince consumers that their product was greener than it actually was.

Need a little help distinguishing the true thing from the fakes? Check out this Responsible Shopper guide which'll give you the skinny on the social and environmental impact of major corporations. And check out What's Green? to find out how GreenYour chooses products.

Shopping online helps you go green because…

• You’ll cut the travel miles racked up by driving alone to the store.
• Online warehouses use fewer resources and less land than retail vendors.

Retail purchases usually involve driving from home to a bricks-and-mortar building for an in-person, in-store visit. There, you browse up and down wide aisles through beautifully displayed products on relatively sparsely-occupied shelves or racks, surrounded by comfy couches, artful wall-hangings, and sample-toting salespeople. The temperature is comfortable, lighting bright, and music seductive. Online shoppers, on the other hand, browse paperless e-catalogs that are displayed not on shelves, but in electronically-simulated stores without all the resource-intensive frills. Products for online vendors are stored efficiently in warehouses, which require less square footage per item.[1]

Material savings

Of course, constructing warehouses for online product storage requires a certain amount of earth-space and natural resources, but e-commerce typically cuts the amount of commercial building space needed by 5 percent. This may not seem like a huge percentage, but in terms of square footage, that’s equivalent to 450 Sears Towers, saving 40 million tons of construction-related greenhouse gas emissions, not to mention the power needed to keep building lights on.[2] Although warehouse buildings must to be air conditioned, it requires only about one-sixteenth the energy of conventional retailers.[3]

The total potential energy savings from reduced operational and maintenance needs of warehouses compared to retail vendors could equal the output of 21 power plants, or 67 billion cubic feet of natural gas. Additional material savings include lower spoilage, reduced paper consumption (conceivably fewer catalogs, direct mail, etc. would be printed) and less chance of overproduction (due to inaccurate sales projections).[4][1]

Transportation advantages

And because shoppers browse from home, they avoid the CO₂ emissions associated with a single-occupancy trip to the store—every minute spent Internet surfing uses 20 times less energy than a minute spent driving to the mall.[5] Fewer cars on the roads means less congestion, which ultimately leads to reduced transportation-related energy emissions. And although delivery trucks produce more smog-generating fumes than small cars, if they’re packed to the gills with multiple orders going to closely-linked locations, they can theoretically eliminate dozens of individual car trips.[6] Not a surprise since ground shipping uses only one-tenth the energy of an average private vehicle trip to the mall.[7] Worst case scenario: an online order ships overnight via air transport. Although this method is far less efficient than ground transport, it still requires only 40 percent of the fuel used by the average individual headed for the local shopping district.[3]

Controversies

While many claim that shopping online is better for the environment, there are those who question the green wisdom in this thinking. For instance, one Amazon.com order air-shipped overnight from a single national warehouse to five different gift recipients (living in disparate locations) could conceivably offset all that energy efficiency gained from fewer individual shopping trips or local trucks delivering out of smaller regional warehouses.[8]

Then there’s the issue of packaging. In 2006, New York City saw a 21 percent jump in post-Christmas cardboard and mixed paper recycling compared to the year before, attributed largely to the increase in online orders received by the city’s residents.[9] In fact, a recent Carnegie Mellon study showed that e-commerce purchases require two and a half times more packaging than in-person shopping transactions.[10]

External links

• CorpWatch Greenwash Awards
• Greenwashing Index
• The Center for Energy and Climate Solutions - The Internet Economy and Global Warming: A Scenario of the Impact of E-commerce on Energy and the Environment
• TreeHugger - Survey: Do You Shop Online?