Looking just at their physical-item distribution model, I'd imagine it's far more carbon-efficient than physically shopping.
Case 1: I drive to the store to get a widget. There is a low chance Store-1 doesn't have it, and I have to keep shopping. Regardless, I am driving about 30 minutes total, conservatively.
Case 2: I order a widget from Amazon. The Amazon driver organizes their stops to minimize travel time, and it's undoubtedly less than 30 minutes driving from the previous stop.
Both cases require transport of goods from factory to the final storage location (shopfront or Amazon warehouse), so the difference there is negligible.
I broadly agree, but the assumption that people drive for 30 minutes to on average to buy an item sounds like a stretch. When I don't buy online I simply walk or ride a bike to the store. On the other hand, I live in an urban setting.
From what I've seen of American cities, I can easily believe there are many in those cities who have a 30 minute drive to a store. And while it's only one specific category of product, I keep hearing about "food deserts" in the USA, where poorer communities are only served by dollar stores that don't have a good range of stuff, so I can easily believe that there's worse than what I've seen in all product categories.
I'm in Berlin, so I'm a 25 minutes walk from three supermarkets a bike shop and a pharmacy, despite being in one of the remote corners of the city. Our previous place was much more central so it had a dozen or so supermarkets, a building supply store, and a shopping mall in that distance. Both new and old place have excellent public transport, I have literally seen someone transport a kitchen sink on one of the trams.
Yeah, that tracks. Even while living in the far end of the Toronto urban fabric we have something like nine grocery stores within 25 minutes of walking distance. And we are not living in an urbanist's wet dream, either.
The sort of extreme car-centric urbanism often seen in the US is the exception around the world, not the norm.
Most people in most of the cities around the world get around by walking, transit or cycling. Car-centric development is a pretty recent and relatively localized phenomenon.
I was just in central Madrid and was taken aback by how few cars there were. I think most roads were bus/taxi/delivery only.
I’m from LA so every European city seems wild with tons of people walking (and biking in places like Amsterdam and Barcelona).
That said, I live in West Hollywood so I actually walk to the grocery stores, restaurants, services, gyms etc except when it’s too hot or too rainy (not that it rains much)
Just a quick Google search shows that Spain has 643 cars per 1000 people and the US has 842.
Yes I see many more people riding bikes and walking in London where I just left in June than DC when we went in May. But going to the big urban areas doesn’t tell you about the rest of the country. For instance in the UK it’s 603 cars per 1000 people.
And yeah I chose a place where I can go to the gym, a convenience store, and a bar without ever walking outside. But I’m not going to say that’s common like the person I replied to seems to think.
Maybe, but when I order from Amazon it's usually an item or three. When I go to the grocery I'm getting dozens of items.
It would be interesting to quantify the carbon emissions from those two systems (they're not fully independent variable) I wouldn't be surprised if my intuition is wrong. Or yours
Of course, the productivity gains are largely drained by the shareholders, so we only collectively get part of expected benefits of a centrally-planned economy.
Case 1: I drive to the store to get a widget. There is a low chance Store-1 doesn't have it, and I have to keep shopping. Regardless, I am driving about 30 minutes total, conservatively.
Case 2: I order a widget from Amazon. The Amazon driver organizes their stops to minimize travel time, and it's undoubtedly less than 30 minutes driving from the previous stop.
Both cases require transport of goods from factory to the final storage location (shopfront or Amazon warehouse), so the difference there is negligible.