Hmmm is ecommerce bad for the environment? | Selling

ricarmic · 2026-03-19T20:39:01.107000Z

@recped I pulled this comment from another thread because it is going to take it way off topic! "FYI - There isn't much of an ozone problem these days and airplanes have a miniscure effect on the ozone layer, Carbon would be more worthwhile to complain about. If you are really into protecting the environment then ecommerce (mail order) is something you should avoid." Some time ago I read interesting articles about the carbon impacts (in publications, not facebook etc). One of the interesting things I noted was that it was put foreward that on average ecommerce has less carbon impact (North American culture) because we're now in the era of non-jumbo department stores and the carbon impact of me or whoever driving around to various locations to assemble my shopping load is more than would be the case if it all got dropped off at our house by a delivery mechanism like the post office. I don't remember how far back that was, but given the large number of different "amazon" etc drivers going past our house along with CP, UPS, Purolator, Fedex, Canpar etc every day, I believe that the way we've implemented to your door ecommerce has defeated the savings that would be had if there were only 1 or a small number of country wide delivery services. I also saw an interesting article that said that buying local produce (while still good) isn't necessarily a smaller carbon impact. The article talked about strawberries from California vs strawberries grown here in Southern Ontario. Because there is a lot of carbon impact of working/maintaining the land, and the relatively short season we have here, despite the carbon cost of flying them here on planes (which apparently is low compared to the working the land aspect), the overall carbon impact of California strawberries was less because the season is much longer there. Personally I think the taste of local is a lot better than what's been grown to survive travel, but that's just me. Now as with any studies out there one wonders who sponsored them vs the result presented and how comprehensive the study results were, but it does make one think!

Discussions

Hmmm is ecommerce bad for the environment? | Selling | eBay Canada EN