Should online shopping be subject to extra environmental tax?
Is it just the economy and convenience that is driving the expansion of #onlineshopping? Instead of walking 500 meters to a store to buy something, we order via the internet and get the same product delivered to our home for a cheaper price. A delivery truck delivers to your door, without us thinking about how much more transport energy has been used on a single product. There are people who buy their new toothbrushes online!?
What about logic and reason?
“E-commerce is increasing emissions. There is no doubt about it,” said Matt Petersen, CEO of the Cleantech incubator. “It’s no longer just FedEx, UPS and the Postal Service on the road coming once a day. There are multiple deliveries to the same address every day for anything you can imagine.”
The growing number of deliveries arriving in cardboard boxes, plastic bags and other packaging has raised an alarm that online shopping leads to more waste, like the garbage patches floating in the world’s oceans.
The carbon footprint also goes up if the customer chooses to return the item. A study in Germany showed that as many as one in three online purchases are returned. According to another study, merchandise worth nearly US$326 million is returned each year in the USA. Two billion kilograms of this ends up in landfill, leading to 13 tons of CO2 being released.
Should the consumer take personal responsibility, or must government regulations finally be introduced?
Think about how you manage your purchases yourself.
Thanks for reading my post.
#Windmush / #curtbergsten