Which of the two is better for the environment: visiting a store or ordering online? And how could it be done more sustainably? E-commerce association Safeshops looked into it and came to a surprising conclusion.
Five times less carbon emissions
Shoes ordered online from a Belgian webshop have a carbon footprint that is five than when you buy them in one of the same retailer’s stores. That is the remarkable conclusion to which Safeshops came in a new study report. Analysis of specialised literature shows that online shopping is more sustainable than buying from a physical store, at least if you compare one-to-one and in average circumstances.
But of course, in practice, it is never that straightforward. Transport emissions determine about half the environmental impact of e-commerce, and transport varies greatly depending on the location and consumer. The difference between urban and rural areas alone is significant, and changing consumer behaviour is another obstacle.
A matter of density
In rural areas, consumers live further away from one other, but they don’t order online as much. As a result, couriers have to cover more kilometres per parcel, making home delivery both more expensive and less sustainable. However, emissions are still lower than when consumers were to drive to the stores individually, which they now do en masse.
In urban areas, consumers are more likely to walk and cycle, although even in Brussels, half of the consumers still use a car to get to pick-up points. However, city dwellers live closer together, and they also order online more often, which increases the density of delivery and reduces the number of kilometres per parcel.
The perversity of online convenience
To calculate the actual environmental impact of e-commerce, one must consider how digitisation affects consumer behaviour. E-commerce also indirectly causes more emissions: Safeshops admits that people consume more due to the never-ending online offer. Moreover, purchases are often split up into multiple online orders and deliveries. Ironically, the time people gain by shopping online, they spend making more trips.
Another perverse consequence of what might otherwise be a sustainable solution is that e-commerce has redrawn the retail landscape, with strong players being online stores without a local presence. These foreign webshops are more dependent on air transport and long-distance transport, which increases their environmental impact. However, almost half of Belgian consumers think that a good webshop should take sustainability into account, but three out of four cannot name such an example spontaneously.
E-commerce could be the most sustainable option
E-commerce could be more sustainable than physical shopping, but it often is not in practice. What can retailers do to reduce the environmental impact of their online activities? The potential solutions are a combination of providing information and making logistical adjustments. Consumers can also play an active role because they must realise that ‘standard delivery’ is not standard.
Free next-day delivery has become an imperative standard today, one that retailers must be bold enough to deviate from, according to Safeshops. The trade organisation encourages webshops to adjust the delivery time slots according to how busy it is and to make use of pick-up points.
‘No rush’ deliveries
One idea that has been around for a long time, but has not been adopted widely, is the ‘no rush’ option. On top of express or standard delivery, there should also be an option for those not in a hurry. For example, couriers can collect and group parcels destined for the same city or street, allowing for shorter routes with more packed vehicles.
On the other hand, clearly defined time slots can be interesting to ensure that consumers are actually at home when the doorbell rings. It saves driving around to a pick-up point or – even worse – having to make a return visit. Webshops, for example, use small time slots of 30 minutes to two hours for deliveries within a few days and bigger time slots ranging from morning to evening for next day deliveries. This way, there is more flexibility to plan the schedule accordingly.
Consumers are willing to cooperate
Home delivery is, in any case, only the most efficient delivery option when pick-up locations are scarce, and consumers could otherwise only collect their purchases by car. That may only be the case in rural areas. In any other situation, delivery to a store or another pick-up point is more environmentally friendly. If home delivery is inevitable, Safeshops recommends carbon-neutral last mile deliveries through partners using electric vehicles (from vans to cargo bikes), delivering from hubs.
If it is free of charge, consumers are happy to wait longer. However, they often do not know which delivery option is the most sustainable. It is therefore up to the retailer to clearly indicate the difference. Of course, this can be done by making the more polluting options more expensive, which is logical as they are also more costly for the retailer, but do not underestimate the power of communication. Studies have shown that informing consumers about the differences in environmental impact is even more powerful than a price difference.
