How Amazon can help the environment by saving millions of dollars
Amazon’s delivery boxes are becoming even more ubiquitous over the holidays. This was the scene at my home yesterday:
I’ve always wondered about the environmental impact of online shopping instead of driving to the store. My suspicion is that online shopping is worse for the environment even if all the boxes and packaging are recycled.(*1) Despite my concerns, Amazon has slowly sucked me in. First it was having great prices along with no sales tax, then it was the massive inventory of products, Kindle e-books, Subscribe & Save, Prime shipping, streaming video and music… it keeps on going. We even have an Amazon Echo and Fire TV stick on the way so we can consume MORE from Bezos & Co.
Along with tens of millions of other consumers, our household has an Amazon Prime membership which, among other things, gives us 2 day delivery on millions of items. And even same day or next day delivery on some items. Its so convenient that I rarely buy anything that isn’t available on Prime even if I don’t need it in two days. I suspect millions of other Prime members do the same thing despite being presented with similar checkout options:
Why wouldn’t you get it as soon as possible? This is the “on demand” economy after all!
Unfortunately, choosing the slowest option has lots of benefits for Amazon & the environment. More time allows them to efficiently ship packages by combining shipments for something I might order in the next week or my next Subscribe & Save shipment. Delivery companies can also group deliveries to locations close to each other if they have more time to deliver packages — less stops = less driving. Reduced shipments over longer time periods results in less boxes, packaging, and UPS deliveries all of which have a significant impact on the environment given Amazon’s massive scale. That’s not to mention the cost savings for Amazon. I would guess that the difference between 1 week (or longer) shipping and the fastest option is ~$1 on average including delivery fees and packaging supplies. With over 50 million prime members ordering multiple times a month, that is a lot of money being thrown out the window.
For a while, Amazon tried to incentivize people to choose the slowest shipping option with a $0.99 credit to purchase videos or music from its store. I chose that a few times but the credits expired so quickly that I never used a single one. Without any incentive to wait, I went back to the fastest shipping method. As you can see from the screenshot above, Amazon is now offering me a Prime Pantry credit to choose slower shipping. But that credit is just the Pantry delivery fee so its not actually an incentive for me personally. In fact, its actually a brilliantly evil marketing ploy to get me to try Prime Pantry. Since we already get roughly a hundred deliveries from Amazon each month, I’m resisting getting sucked in even further. For now.
I would love for Amazon to offer me a useful credit that doesn’t expire in a few weeks. I’d choose that option for the vast majority of my purchases! Amazon’s cost to offer a $1 credit for digital services (music, TV, movies) is probably anywhere from $0.30 to $0.70 depending on the content. Why doesn’t Amazon offer a digital credit with a long expiry date such as 6–12 months if they could more than offset it multiple times over with cost savings? And reduce their environmental impact? Seems like a win-win-win for Amazon-Customers-Planet. I bet millions of customers would be happier.
Your move Amazon.
*(1) If anyone knows of an environmental impact analysis comparing online purchases to brick & mortar shopping, please share!
