Green shipping this holiday season?
Here’s a simple step you can take this holiday season to address climate change: ask Amazon to promote greener shipping options.
Promote Green Shipping
Holiday Shopping, Shipping, and Climate Change
More and more people are shopping for gifts online this holiday season, and Amazon remains a leader in the industry.1 Quick-shipping, getting our stuff within days of ordering it, is expected.
Meanwhile, the carbon footprint of these quick-shipping options is larger than if we went to the store ourselves.2
Amazon’s Impact
Online shopping can be an amazing thing — freeing us up to enjoy nature by shortening the time we have to spend running errands, especially errands in our cars.
But what happens to that perfect holiday gift you found on Amazon?
It gets picked off the shelf in the warehouse, and placed on an airplane to quickly take it across the country…
Then it’s put on a truck — but because you selected the quicker shipping option, it gets put on a truck that’s only half-full in order to meet the deadline.
Sure, it arrives at your doorstep in two days, but your carbon footprint for that package could actually be greater than if you had just gone to the store yourself — something many of us are shocked to find out.3
How You Can Help
Companies like Amazon can do a lot to make their operations greener — and this isn’t the only thing on our wishlist this holiday season.
We need to do everything we can to eliminate carbon pollution, because these emissions are worsening climate change. The quick-shipping industry is one place we can have a profound impact.
Encouraging customers to choose the slowest shipping option when shopping online is one way businesses like Amazon can reduce carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. It means items can be grouped for efficient delivery — and shipping’s contribution to climate change can be reduced.
That’s why we’re calling on Amazon to take this simple step: alert consumers to the greener shipping option by writing “Go Green” before their standard shipping option.
Take Action
As one of the world’s largest online retailers, Amazon can take a simple but powerful step: to lead the way to giving people the clear choice for the greener shipping option by making it clear. But we need your voice.
Promote Green Shipping
1. Erin Jordan, “The Future of Retail 2018,” Walker Sands Communications, 2018.
2. Dimitri Weildeli, “Environmental Analysis of US Online Shopping,” MIT Center For Transportation Logistics, Accessed November 30, 2017.
3. Dimitri Weildeli, “Environmental Analysis of US Online Shopping,” MIT Center For Transportation Logistics, Accessed November 30, 2017.