According to a new study, Life Cycle Comparison of Traditional Retail and E-commerce Logistics for Electronic Products: A Case Study of buy.com, by the Carnegie Mellon Green Design Institute, e-commerce delivery uses less energy and produces less CO2 than traditional retailing. By how much? 30%.
Customer transportation encompassed approximately 65% of the traditional retail primary energy expenditures and CO2 equivalent emissions on average. For e-commerce, packaging and last mile delivery were responsible for approximately 22% and 32% of the e- commerce energy usage, respectively (www.ce.cmu.edu). The study used data received from Buy.com for electronic products, and built on prior logistics Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) research. If you want to get specific, the study compared the energy use and CO2 emissions associated with delivering a flash drive from Buy.com to a home via retail or e-commerce.
The calculations in the study required many assumptions by the scientists, but compared to studies in the past, they were much more informed. Buy.com provided the Carnegie Mellon scientists with electricity statistics from its data center, measured for 932 days. The systems that were under consideration within the comparative study boundary were warehouse energy use, electricity use at home to place order, transportation from wholesale warehouse to the retail store, distribution center or retail warehouse, last mile transportation (local distribution center to customer home or from retail store to customer home), data center electricity use to run e-commerce site, packaging, and energy use in traditional retail store.
The results favored the e-commerce industry. The scientists found that, by far, the largest environmental cost of traditional shopping is a consumer driving his or her own car to a store, using a mean value of 14 miles round-trip for shopping trips. While much of the energy expenditure for e-commerce also goes towards transportation (last-mile delivery), a UPS or FedEx truck delivering dozens of packages along its daily route (including the consumer’s neighborhood) uses a lot less energy per package, on average. This is one of the key areas that makes online shopping much more “greener”.
Data centers and home computers used the least amount of energy in relation to the other systems. In the “average” model, warehousing was equally factored into both traditional retail and e-commerce. E-commerce does have environmental downfalls as well, including packaging (more packaging is required for a delivered good than a good purchased in a retail store) and airmail. In the “air-shipping” chart, e-commerce almost matches traditional retail in negative environmental impact, so when you wait until the day before your Mom’s birthday to buy her gift, remember that overnight delivery via airmail will basically eliminate the environmental benefit of e-commerce.
While the study has uncertainties, it is a good indicator of how e-commerce benefits the environment in relation to traditional, brick-and-mortar retailing. But, this doesn’t apply to all e-commerce. Buy.com, and of course, Green Crawler, operate with an unique virtual model, in which products are shipped directly from distribution partners to customers, instead of e-commerce sites like Amazon, which still use the supply chain step that ships products from distribution partners to their retail warehouse, before shipping to customers. So, with that said, comparison shopping e-commerce sites use the least amount of energy and produce the least amount of CO2. But, traditional retailing still has the energy-edge over e-commerce in one scenario…when consumers walk to the store.
Tags: Green Shopping, Online Shopping