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How Much Do Amazon Deliveries Contribute To Global Warming? (newrepublic.com) 209

Posted by EditorDavid from the boxes-with-smiles dept.
DevNull127 quotes The New Republic: It's no coincidence that the number of trucks on the road has doubled since Amazon launched in 1994. That's a huge deal for the climate, as Vox reported last year in an article on the environmental impact of online shopping: "In 2016, transportation overtook power plants as the top producer of carbon dioxide emissions in the US for the first time since 1979. Nearly a quarter of the transportation footprint comes from medium- and heavy-duty trucks. And increasingly the impact is coming in what people in the world of supply-chain logistics call 'the last mile,' meaning the final stretch from a distribution center to a package's destination. (The 'last mile' can in truth be a dozen miles or more.)"

The good news is that e-commerce has the potential to be less carbon-intensive than brick-and-mortar retail. As Anne Goodchild, director of the University of Washington's Supply Chain Transportation and Logistics Center, told BuzzFeed News, delivery trucks emit "between 20% and 75% less carbon dioxide per customer on average than passenger vehicles driving to [stores]." But that's only if online stores choose the delivery times themselves. That way, they can pack trucks full of goods and optimize their routes. "When customers choose," Goodchild noted, "the carbon savings are significantly smaller."

Thus, Amazon could significantly cut its carbon footprint by prioritizing shipping optimization over consumer convenience.... Americans will have to begin thinking of Amazon.com and other e-commerce sites not as on-demand delivery services for every little thing, but stores that require just as much forethought as a trip to the mall did twenty years ago. And that might be too much to ask of the average consumer in the digital age. In which case, the government might have to step in.
Amazon's biggest carbon impact comes from its AWS cloud servers, though by the end of 2018 they'd already converted 50% of that to renewable energy, according to the article. And more green efforts may be coming. "For the past eight years, Bezos has ignored requests from the nonprofit Carbon Disclosure Project, which collects the carbon footprint data of large corporations. But last month, he agreed to eventually make the company's emissions data public. It's expected later this year."

The article also raises the possibility of a future with delivery drones powered by renewable energy. But it adds tht until that day comes, expecting deliveries within 48 hours "is incompatible with solving global warming."
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How Much Do Amazon Deliveries Contribute To Global Warming? More

How Much Do Amazon Deliveries Contribute To Global Warming?

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  • Answer: none (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 ) on Monday April 29, 2019 @12:07AM (#58507802) Journal
    Amazon wouldn't deliver anything if people didn't buy. Blame yourself, not Amazon.
    • Fuck you. You know Amazon wants you to buy things. Hello FREE SHIPPING. Stop pretending Amazon didn't create this mess.

    • Amazon wouldn't deliver anything if people didn't buy. Blame yourself, not Amazon.

      This article is a troll. What you said, but also, the implications of what you said. Amazon is having a positive impact on the environment because otherwise, people would have gone shopping at numerous different stores with their own vehicles rather than shopping online and just having the stuff delivered.

      Too. Many. People. Trying. To. Alter. The. World. Without. Thinking. Things. Through. To. Their. Logical. Conclusion. (as if there is any "true" conclusion!)

  • Zero Effect. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Paleolibertarian ( 930578 ) on Monday April 29, 2019 @12:10AM (#58507808) Journal

    Since every Amazon delivery is offset by a trip not made by a purchaser, my guess is the net effect is zero.

    • It depends.
      If, like where I live, stores were still close to places of work, you can shop during a break or after work.

      Still, I think we can agree that it would be better to have deliveries only once or twice a week?
      That would be much more efficient.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Mod this up! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Monday April 29, 2019 @09:51AM (#58509310) Journal

      I can't believe this kind of garbage even makes it to Slashdot.....

      Who CARES how much Amazon "contributes to global warming"? It's practically impossible to calculate its impact vs what the impact would be if people just bought the items elsewhere!

      You'd have to know all sorts of variables like the fuel efficiency of each vehicle a person would have used to drive to a store (and how far/which one they'd go to) for items they didn't order online. Then you'd have to know how many items they still bought online - but from another company, and know the fuel efficiency of the delivery vehicles used to get THEIR merchandise to the customers.

      To be truly accurate, you'd even have to know statistics like how many returns Amazon customers made vs. the number they'd have made if they bought elsewhere. Is it less or more? How about all the times Amazon does something "customer friendly" like letting a person just keep the original item that was incorrect or broken or ?? If other companies demanded it be returned to them, that creates more pollution for the return delivery of it.

      It's all an exercise in futility, really. Quit worrying about everyone's "impact" towards climate change and start facing the facts that it's a PLANET-WIDE situation we got into from well over 100 years of using the types of fuel sources we chose for our energy needs! Instead of all the finger-pointing and virtue-signaling of "We're greener than YOU are!" -- we should start looking at long-term plans to deal with a slightly warmer climate, and economically smart plans to keep gradually changing to better options for energy generation.

  • OPPORTUNITY COSTS, damnit... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Shane_Optima ( 4414539 ) on Monday April 29, 2019 @12:36AM (#58507876) Journal
    Sigh. Opportunity costs, people. We really need to make room in high school curriculums to emphasize important shit like opportunity costs and basic statistics.

    If enough people used Amazon or a similar online retailer it heavily (to the point that it replaces B&M store trips), obviously it could end up saving CO2 emissions. As a thought experiment, imagine 50 people from a neighborhood all driving to the store to buy groceries vs. one grocery van delivering groceries to 50 houses... it should be obvious which one saves on gasoline. Real world scenarios are more complicated than that but ultimately, as many B&M stores to die off, there should will be a net reduction in carbon emissions. I'm destitute at the moment, but back when I was merely lower-middle class and had Prime and I can say it definitely I ended up driving less because of it.

    Please though, don't let Finance 101 get in the way of the hand wringing. Maybe the next article could be asking whether Amazon should ban obese drivers in the name of a lower carbon footprint.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ichijo ( 607641 )

      Was this hypothetical store forced as usual by the city to provide more than the market optimal amount of parking? If not, many of its customers will arrive on foot or by bicycle or mass transit.

      • 1) I'm not sure that If makes any sense on the face of it 2)No, they won't. Not in most American cities, anyway. Make you can spare three and a half hours to try to make mass transit work. Bless your heart. In the spread-out parts of America, it's far more productive to be thinking about encouraging the electric car revolution (which isn't just good for the environment, but should end up being considerably cheaper and considerably more durable than ICE cars once the economies of scale fully kick in.)

      • Re:OPPORTUNITY COSTS, damnit... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by LostMyAccount ( 5587552 ) on Monday April 29, 2019 @06:43AM (#58508654)

        The current grocery shopping paradigm of a weekly trip with many bags will never translate to foot, bicycle or mass transit. It's too much stuff and too perishable to hump it like that. The best you'll do is at the margins, the super dedicated bike lifestyle types with their cargo bikes and little trailers and a few people willing to walk a couple of blocks with a little grocery cart. Forget mass transit, nobody is making a traditional grocery trip around here on the bus.

        What we need is to switch back from the "supermarket" model back to the neighborhood "green grocer" and "butcher". You buy enough for maybe 1-2 meals at a time and much of your shopping is done for daily needs.

        Of course this won't happen because we don't live in those kinds of neighborhoods anymore and those stores all closed or only sell cigarettes and lottery anymore. Plus everyone works so many goddamn hours anymore that there's no energy left for a regular stop at the green grocer on the way home for dinner fixings.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Ichijo ( 607641 )

          we don't live in those kinds of neighborhoods anymore

          We've made them illegal. Most of our neighborhoods no longer pass the popsicle test [theatlantic.com]. How's that for progress?

          • we don't live in those kinds of neighborhoods anymore

            We've made them illegal. Most of our neighborhoods no longer pass the popsicle test [theatlantic.com]. How's that for progress?

            We arrest parents that would allow their children to go out and buy a popsicle. We must adhere to the reality that stranger danger fear grips society.

        • What we need is to switch back from the "supermarket" model back to the neighborhood "green grocer" and "butcher". You buy enough for maybe 1-2 meals at a time and much of your shopping is done for daily needs.

          While I do prefer to buy local when I can, and I wish we have more convenient farmer's markets around me, this buying food every two days just won't cut it for me and I'd venture to guess, most regular US citizens that actually cook for themselves.

          I don't have time during the week to go shopping. I

          • My thinking is that the corner market made sense when:

            1) Most people had one within a couple of blocks of their house and could walk there or did walk past there every day for near zero time cost.

            2) People mostly bought perishables there because they had little (or poor) refrigeration at home. Maybe no freezer at all.

            Dry bulk staples may have been bought in larger quantities -- flour, coffee, sugar, salt, canned goods, stuff that was shelf stable. "Spaghetti ala putanesca" or "Whore's Spaghetti" is a reci

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Ichijo ( 607641 )

            "I don't have time to walk or bike to the grocery store every day or two because I'm too busy exercising and making the weekly pilgrimage to Costco. And because I've chosen to live and work where driving is the only practical option for me, I think the government should continue to micromanage local businesses in a way that benefits me personally, no matter what such Big Government socialist meddling does to the economy."

    • Ok I RTFS a little closer... The idea that on-demand shopping is going to be massively inefficient to the point of requiring the government to step in is ludicrous. If the USPS guy (for example) is gonna be going down your street anyway, how the hell does him sticking a box in or near your mailbox constitute some massively inefficient system?

      Yes, it's ultimately better if people make bigger bulk orders but if the total volume of all orders if high enough, it really shouldn't be such a huge deal. Certainl
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Well, these are probably wrinkles to be smoothed out. I'm looking and thinking long term here. Package theft will continue to be a problem until many people get larger locking mailboxes (people can drop stuff in but not get things out without the key). People will indeed cut down their B&M visits, though it will vary by person. My mother hardly ever goes inside Walmart anymore--just drives up and they put it in the car. The next step from there is home delivery. People will gradually break themselves o
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • Well it's hard to say just how distant that future is. Certainly, home delivery of most things will become the norm before the polar ice caps melt. So I think we're better off talking about how to accelerate it than theorizing that it might be generating more carbon and hand-wringing and talking about forcing the government to step in to force Amazon to be more efficient with their shipments (like TFS said.)

            I bet that is where the real issue is.

            Well... I dunno about that. My gut says that's not gonna be near the top of the list. I'm not saying

            • Comment removed based on user account deletion
              • Ok well the problem is, voluntary measures are not going to make any measurable difference. I really dislike corporate virtue signaling: see, we're using less packaging, see we're paying our workers more... it's just not a sustainable (to coin a phrase) way of managing improvement. These things are run by PR firms. They'll change it back when you aren't looking, or figure out some other way of cutting corners. If you want to make a measurable difference, it must be legislation or nothing.

                And "too much

            • Certainly, home delivery of most things will become the norm before the polar ice caps melt.

              Wow...really, so people actually think in terms of stuff like this?

              I mean, I don't see the polar ice caps melting enough in my remaining lifetime to affect me or my standard of life...so, what do I care?

              Not my problem, I have more problems with things that directly affect me, work, money, saving for retirement, and how to best squeeze the most enjoyment I can from my life.

              As far as I know, this is my only shot at

              • Oh well, I don't base my personal life decisions around any of it. Always been way too poor for that game. But it's not *unpleasant* to think about. And I'm in favor of "positive" solutions (encouraging tech revolutions that were gonna happen anyway like electric cars. Which isn't to say I agree with our current incentive program; I'd rather we figure out how to attack as aggressively as possible whatever is keeping batteries relatively expensive and/or fragile) instead of shaming and punishing and banning

                • And I'm in favor of "positive" solutions (encouraging tech revolutions that were gonna happen anyway like electric cars.

                  I'd rather we figure out how to attack as aggressively as possible whatever is keeping batteries relatively expensive and/or fragile) instead of shaming and punishing and banning. I think it can be win/win to an extent.

                  I can see that, and I'm in favor of things that help, I mean, I'm not against things that will help the environment but I'm not terribly motivated to do anything that less

          • I once ordered a hard disk and it came in a box that was probably 2x2x1 (in feet). That's what in metric, 12 shoeboxes?

            It's nice that it's protected ... except the disk (at least it was in a bubble-wrap pouch) was right in one corner. Maybe they know which side to drop them on.

    • Please though, don't let Finance 101 get in the way of the hand wringing. Maybe the next article could be asking whether Amazon should ban obese drivers in the name of a lower carbon footprint.

      Well, we already have an article about that here, about obese people on airplanes and carbon emissions from planes.

      Years ago, I made a 100 percent facetious argument that if we gentically modified humans so that they would all be midgets, we would use much less natural resources. Smaller houses, cars, etc.

      So I'm expecting some study soon that seriously demands genetic engineering to downsize people in order to reduce carbon emissions.

      Sumpin wrong with humans.

      • Years ago, I made a 100 percent facetious argument that if we gentically modified humans so that they would all be midgets, we would use much less natural resources. Smaller houses, cars, etc.

        Have you seen the movie Downsizing? It was fun.

        • Years ago, I made a 100 percent facetious argument that if we gentically modified humans so that they would all be midgets, we would use much less natural resources. Smaller houses, cars, etc.

          Have you seen the movie Downsizing? It was fun.

          No, sounds pretty interesting.

    • Sigh. Opportunity costs, people. We really need to make room in high school curriculums to emphasize important shit like opportunity costs and basic statistics.

      And in university curriculums, as well. Note the byline on the article:

      Miguel Jaller is an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and co-lead of the Sustainable Freight Initiative at the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis.

      You'd think a university researcher would think through the economics of shopping a bit more ca

  • Better than the alternatives (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hierofalcon ( 1233282 ) on Monday April 29, 2019 @12:38AM (#58507884)

    Sure the last mile delivery is a problem, but it is far, far less of a problem than manufacturing all the useless and useful stuff Amazon produces internally or provides a store front for and shipping that stuff to stores in all the available colors and sizes within easy driving distance of every person in the world only to set on the shelf and mostly not be bought.

    There are many sides to any complex problem, but as long as people want a variety of choices, and we don't want to overproduce, then there is a huge environmental savings with Amazon as well. Companies like Walmart and Menards and Target and Kohl's and at one point K-Mart, Sears and JC Penney (trying to focus on general retailers vs specialty retailers) provide a selection of goods. But it is still just a selection in a small range of colors, patterns, styles, and sizes. If they stock it, great. If they don't, well you're out of luck (or occasionally you can do a special order through the store which is a slightly smaller carbon hit than a custom delivery but much slower in general).

    Amazon tries to bundle orders into common deliveries whenever possible, if you order enough from them. If you treat them like a boutique, then yes the cost is high. But that is no different than having to drive around to many local shops trying to find what you want.

    • Re:Better than the alternatives (Score:4)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Monday April 29, 2019 @12:43AM (#58507902) Journal

      I believe the real trade-off is fewer big trucks versus more smaller trucks. Amazon may be trying to save money on driver employment costs at the expense of more energy expenditure/emissions.

      • I believe the real trade-off is fewer big trucks versus more smaller trucks.

        They're not even big trucks, they're no bigger than a four-door, standard-bed dually pickup. Unless you meant the stuff being shipped between UPS locations, but that stuff would take a big truck to get to your local retailer anyway.

    • Re:Better than the alternatives (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Drethon ( 1445051 ) on Monday April 29, 2019 @07:24AM (#58508792)

      Shipments that fit on existing USPS routes add almost no impact, other than maybe a slight bit more gas burned for that vehicle as these trucks are already running the complete route each day. Though when enough shipments cause an extra truck on the route each day, is a bit of a different issue.

  • Amazon Drones. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Amazon Drones delivering packages = skeet shooting with prizes!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by novakyu ( 636495 )

      Or first step to Autofac [wikipedia.org].

    • Electric drones: use clean power, but use significantly more energy per trip than land vehicles.

      Drones are just about the least efficient method of transport imaginable. Yes, they may be electric, but if you have to increase your total energy usage it's going to require much more infrastructure.

  • Inefficient (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kokuyo ( 549451 ) on Monday April 29, 2019 @02:06AM (#58508036) Journal

    Frankly if Amazon let me choose to have all items shipped together and then would actually honor that request, the whole thing would be a non-issue.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Workplaces should also accept personal deliveries for staff. Concentrate deliveries in as few locations as possible, and Amazon knows when the business is open so no "sorry we missed you" cards.

  • Pretty easy to see that if Amazon wasnâ(TM)t delivering, every one of those packages would still be delivered to a brick and mortar. Then every one of those deliveries would instead have a car driving to the store picking up the goods. The small trucks out for delivery cut the amount of emissions if anything. Of course there are a lot of impulse buys that might not happen but overall it doesn't add up. Think of it like the local post. If everyone had to drive to get their daily mail vs a single truck s

  • None (Score:3)

    by AHuxley ( 892839 ) on Monday April 29, 2019 @03:11AM (#58508166) Journal
    People would be getting the same products from a city shop, store.
    They ask to have the product delivered to them.
    Same product is transported. Whats the difference between a SUV, truck, car, van to "buy"/deliver the product?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The effect is probably nearly a wash. SJWs are just looking for something else to complain about or someone else to blame

  • Over-packaging (Score:5, Insightful)

    by coofercat ( 719737 ) on Monday April 29, 2019 @07:41AM (#58508850) Homepage Journal

    I'd imagine that the over-packaging of most of the goods we buy is responsible for far more carbon than the deliveries.

    I bought a pair of headphones (£5) - came in a cardboard box (inside an Amazon 'envelope' thingy), with a plastic bag wrapping the headphones, in a plastic tray. There's also a little plastic pouch thing to keep them in. IMHO, ditch the plastic inlay, plastic bag and just stick it all in the pouch inside the box. Do away with the box if delivering via Amazon or other 'distance seller'.

    My wife bought a coffee grinder. Came in an amazon box + that crinkly wrap stuff. Then the product box (a good solid, well fitting thing), with two blocks of polystyrene, and the whole grinder in a plastic bag inside it. Even the power plug got it's own plastic bag, and had a plastic cover over the three prongs on the plug. Inside the bean hopper thing, another bit of plastic over the clear plastic cover (presumably a dust cover). Again, IMHO, do away with all of that plastic, and turn the polystyrene into that moulded cardboard 'mache' stuff.

    Fix that shit, and we'll be saving a load of carbon on all the plastic, a shit tonne of money on the products we buy and the delivery will carry less weight so cost us less carbon there too.

    • I think getting the product makers to allow Amazon to open a package and remove the extra stuff (along with costing someone's time) is going to be a hard sell as there is no easy proof something wasn't added/removed to the package. I don't think Amazon can do anything about this, but if you can talk the product makers into a package free product, then this could be possible. Plus might save a couple cents in packaging costs.

    • the plastic could be replaced by certain vegetable-based wax covered cardboard. Petroleum based wax is not recyclable by any known efficient tech.

  • they can pack trucks full of goods and optimize their routes

    So Amazon does a pretty good job at this. Other retailers, not so much. We ordered something from Target and the offer to get free shipping past a certain arbitrary cutoff point meant the larger item needed a some dumb little thing added to it to bump over the limit. So, add a pair of socks for $2. The socks showed up next day express shipping but the larger item? On back order! After a couple of months waiting, cancelled the back ordered large item. Kept the freely next day delivered socks. Thanks for loo

  • Pretty sure that putting everyone in town's packages on trucks, and efficiently plotting the delivery routes, is greener than all of us driving around individually finding and buying and bringing home all that stuff ourselves.
  • Does Amazon make carbon sense in dense cities like NYC or DC, where the "last mile" is often on foot? If I'm walking or bicycling to pick up toilet paper at the pharmacy, isn't that less carbon-intensive than having a truck driver deliver it to my home?

  • Very very few of these systems actually use carbon-neutral power. What they actually do is buy power from wherever, and then subsidize someone else's windpower or whatever, and maybe pay someone else to not cut down trees, etc. This kind of greenwashing is self-evidently not sustainable. If they were really being directly carbon-neutral, they'd be doing things like optimizing their system needs to fit within the power available.

    This isn't just splitting hairs. Recycling is currently in this spot, with a

  • What's more fuel efficient: everyone takes their own vehicle around town to various stores for shopping, or one truck goes to a warehouse to shop, then drives a route hitting all the houses in the neighborhood?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by x0 ( 32926 )

      What's more fuel efficient: everyone takes their own vehicle around town to various stores for shopping, or one truck goes to a warehouse to shop, then drives a route hitting all the houses in the neighborhood?

      No, that's irrelevant, and it doesn't conform to the narrative. You see, you're supposed to feel bad that you have this lifestyle. That's why /. editorializes so outrageously in the headlines.

      What you should be doing is looking in the mirror and chastising yourself vehemently. Then, after you've shouted yourself hoarse, grab the nearest environmentally friendly non-leather belt, and lash yourself at least 10 times.

      Serves you right, you elitist bastard... You make me ill.

      m

  • This doesn't focus on the right question. Really, we don't care how much Amazon deliveries contribute to global warming We care about how much more or less it adds than other transportation methods (including warehouse to distributor to store to your vehicle). And we don't even care abotu that for any one product, but for purchasing patterns over time. Parts of the distribution path will be more efficient due to bulk, parts less efficient. How does that work out?

  • ... that 50 lb sack of coal I ordered from Amazon arrives soon. My stove is almost out and it's getting chilly in here.

  • Back during the coal-fired British Empire days, you would get home delivery of mail five times a day in any city, with goods from all over the Empire.

    This is the same, only worse.

    Stop getting Prime.

    • nonsense, there are net less carbon emissions because of Amazon, article written by a retard who doesn't understand the number of cars not driving because 1 truck is.

  • A delivery truck leaves the warehouse at 8am with products for 74 customers. The late-model truck is holding 22 gallons of gas. The truck returns to the warehouse at 4pm, having made all its deliveries and still carrying 9 gallons of gas.

    Would it be better for the environment if those 74 customers get in their cars and drive to the warehouse? We can't be sure- maybe they all drive Teslas. But let's guess that the truck is FAR MORE EFFICIENT.

    Additionally, we assume that the driver is a professional and carri

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