Re: [pf] From today's Grist: Retail or e-tail?

by Sharon Flesher

09 December 2000 00:49 UTC

>From yesterday's Salon, the following article on the same subject may be of
interest:

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/12/07/ecology/index.html

A sidebar to the story gives tips for "green shopping" on-line, namely under
no circumstances should you choose overnight delivery! Otherwise, the story
says, most e-shopping will be more eco-friendly than conventional shopping,
which usually requires lots of retail space, acres of asphalt, and cars.

My rule of thumb is if I can get it at a locally-owned downtown store to
which I am able to walk or bike, that's where I buy. Otherwise, I order
online. That means the only reason to go to the mall is to see a movie
(which is RARE in our house with two small children-- the only movie I've
seen in the past 6 months was Rugrats in Paris last week for Dylan's
birthday!)

Sharon

Molly wrote:
> I don't know about this ("But Carnegie Mellon's Green Design
> Initiative, in its case study "Harry Potter and the Ozone Layer," says
> it
> may be less environmentally efficient to ship books individually to
> customers, often overnight by plane, than for customers to buy books
> in-person that were sent to bookstores by the crate load.  Researchers
> at the New Jersey Institute for Technology found that buying a computer
> online was worse for the
> environment."). I think there are other factors, as Priscilla suggests.
>
> For instance, today I drove to Borders, our closest bookstore (45 mins
> away one-way), to look for some items today. I bought a couple of books
> but they mostly didn't have what I wanted. Amazon does. I ordered from
> Amazon (stuff takes 3-7 days to get here, so I don't think it's coming
> "overnight by plane"). I guess I could have called (long-distance) to
> Borders to see if they had what I wanted before I left home, but I
> visited them as part of other errands and a volunteer job, so it wasn't
> too much out of the way. But what if I didn't know the exact /names/ of
> the books/videos/CDs I wanted, just the /types/ of the items? No one
> could help me by phone, and if I drove to the store I would potentially
> be wasting 1-1/2 hours of my time and a few gallons of gas for nothing,
> or maybe to feel like it wasn't all wasted, I would buy something I
> didn't even want, which would also be wasteful.
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