Grocery Delivery Lowers Carbon Dioxide Emissions Over Individual Trips 417
vinces99 writes "Those trips to the store can take a chunk out of your day and put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But now University of Washington engineers have found that using a grocery delivery service can cut carbon dioxide emissions by at least half when compared with individual household trips to the store. Trucks filled to capacity that deliver to customers clustered in neighborhoods produced the most savings in carbon dioxide emissions, but there are even benefits with delivery to rural areas."
Re:Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
They make no mention of public transportation because that would point a finger at one of the many gaping holes in their premise. Constraining your problem areas to a very tiny subset does not make your research any more valid...
Hahahahahahaha hahaha.... Hahahaha... Wait a second while I peel myself off the floor here. Heh... Okay, what was that you were saying about private transportation being a tiny "very tiny subset" of people's transport usage? Also, the equation you gave your third-grader is wrong; you need separate variables for distance1 and distance2, and at that point the equation is not solvable until you do some research to determine what those distances would be in various real-world situations. Like, say, the research described in TFA.
Re:Only true for a small portion of the world (Score:5, Interesting)
It really comes down to how our communities are designed. The US has worked really hard to build communities that are difficult to live your life without a car. As an example, the nearest grocery to me is 4 miles away, the nearest clothes cleaner is 2 miles in the other direction. The nearest gas station, however is only .75 miles.
As a contrast, I spent a couple months in a smaller town in Holland. I walked to work (2 miles) and all the grocery stores (and other stores too) were on the way and a short work from my hotel. I generally stopped every few days to pick up whatever I needed (note, the fridge was small... like dorm fridges in the US, as were fridges as friends' houses). If I'd had a bike it would have been an even easier time. But they just set things up in their communities so that it's easier to do day-by-day shopping and harder to buy an SUV full of perishiables to fill a giant fridge.
I now bike-commute here back in the US, and while it's definitely not as convenient as driving but it's been good for my health and I find I buy a lot less stuff that ends up being thrown out anyway.
Sure, I missed having grocery stores open at 3:00am, but if I'm given the chance, I'd definitely go back for a longer stint. It's a more relaxing lifestyle, even while I still worked hard.