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When I was a kid, mom would do the grocery shipping once every 2 weeks. She'd load the five kids into the van and we'd trek over and fill 2 shopping carts with

When I was a kid, mom would do the grocery shipping once every 2 weeks. She'd load the five kids into the van and we'd trek over and fill 2 shopping carts with 10 boxes of breakfast cereal, 2 gallons of milk, 2 pounds of bacon, 8 pounds of hamburger, 24 cans of Campbell's soup... Flash forward to 2018 and my wife is buying things online to the point that we're getting 4-6 items delivered per week. I'd guess that's not exceptional. With 'free delivery' for under $35, I can see her increasing that to on average one delivery item per day. Kind of like the milk man used to do. What concerns me is that the amount of energy that goes into getting all that stuff into my home seems to have substantially increased, and, will continue to increase as more businesses incorporate low cost or free delivery. So it makes me wonder where this ends. It seems we'll wind up with delivery trucks, perhaps autonomous electric vehicles, combing the suburbs throughout the day. I keep contemplating the extremes: 149 items acquired in one trip the way my mom used to operate, vs.149 items delivered to my home one at a time over a 2 week period. What are the trade-offs?

randomsearch 9y ago
I had the same thought process. One point to note is that a delivery guy might deliver to multiple people in your neighbourhood, so his driving is amortised over those orders, whereas when you drive the shops you're making the whole journey for yourself. If delivery was organised extremely efficiently, e.g. a single delivery service that delivers everything at the same time as the post, it's no doubt that it would be much more efficient than individuals going to the shops themselves. So we're on a spectrum where the extremes are "much better" and "much worse" than pre-internet, but it's not clear to me where we are on the spectrum; in particular, it would be interesting to know whether the net energy consumption has increased or dropped.
Symmetry 9y ago
I'd expect the energy cost of deliveries to be about an order of magnitude less than doing the shopping yourself if you have to drive out of your way to do it. Goods being delivered make up a significant fraction of the weight of a delivery vehicle but a tiny fraction of your car when you're driving to the store, even if you are getting all that stuff.
cowsandmilk 9y ago
> What concerns me is that the amount of energy that goes into getting all that stuff into my home seems to have substantially increased, and, will continue to increase as more businesses incorporate low cost or free delivery. > > I keep contemplating the extremes: 149 items acquired in one trip the way my mom used to operate, vs.149 items delivered to my home one at a time over a 2 week period. What are the trade-offs? Energy-wise, you present a fallacy that all those deliveries serve just your home. 50 houses getting deliveries every day from the same truck for 2 weeks = 14 trips. Those 50 houses all going to the store once every 2 weeks = 50 trips. Not to mention all the land wasted for building parking around said store.
icantdrive55 9y ago
The trade off is buying a lot of stuff through Amazon is bad for the environment/neighborhood. Amazon gets away with inefficient shipping because they afford to, and Bezos knows where American economy is, and will stay. There will always be a huge pool of unemployed/underemployed/desperate people who will begrudgingly deliver his product. It will be the working poor bringing stuff to the rich. Bezos could care less about trucks speeding through neighborhoods; he's not going to live outside the gate. He could care less about gas use. That's someone else's worry. His worry is making big money. For what? He's past middle age. I wouldn't be so hard on the guy if he provided good jobs. Your mom shoppping once a week is more efficient/moral than having a bunch of trucks delivering one, and two products multiple times a day. They will have us debating this forever. Moral? At one time, grocery unions were kinda srtrong. Today they are essentially gone. Delivery drivers will eventually loose all union representation. In all honestly, if Bezos doesn't start paying his employees, and tangential employees more; I'll look into buying straight from China, and bypassing Amazon completely. The wealthy are selling out, why don't we?
shadofx 9y ago
+delivery truck can serve the entire neighborhood, saving gas from everyone's cars +frequent restocking means you can use a smaller, more energy efficient refrigerator +frequent restocking potentially means fresher food -supply is centralized, if a disaster occurs making the shipping center inaccessible you'll starve sooner -government/big biz can more finely monitor and control your food supply
xapata 9y ago
You're not considering the energy and waste of maintaining many retail outlets throughout the city.

randomsearch 9y ago

I had the same thought process. One point to note is that a delivery guy might deliver to multiple people in your neighbourhood, so his driving is amortised over those orders, whereas when you drive the shops you're making the whole journey for yourself. If delivery was organised extremely efficiently, e.g. a single delivery service that delivers everything at the same time as the post, it's no doubt that it would be much more efficient than individuals going to the shops themselves. So we're on a spectrum where the extremes are "much better" and "much worse" than pre-internet, but it's not clear to me where we are on the spectrum; in particular, it would be interesting to know whether the net energy consumption has increased or dropped.

Symmetry 9y ago

I'd expect the energy cost of deliveries to be about an order of magnitude less than doing the shopping yourself if you have to drive out of your way to do it. Goods being delivered make up a significant fraction of the weight of a delivery vehicle but a tiny fraction of your car when you're driving to the store, even if you are getting all that stuff.

cowsandmilk 9y ago

> What concerns me is that the amount of energy that goes into getting all that stuff into my home seems to have substantially increased, and, will continue to increase as more businesses incorporate low cost or free delivery. > > I keep contemplating the extremes: 149 items acquired in one trip the way my mom used to operate, vs.149 items delivered to my home one at a time over a 2 week period. What are the trade-offs? Energy-wise, you present a fallacy that all those deliveries serve just your home. 50 houses getting deliveries every day from the same truck for 2 weeks = 14 trips. Those 50 houses all going to the store once every 2 weeks = 50 trips. Not to mention all the land wasted for building parking around said store.

icantdrive55 9y ago

The trade off is buying a lot of stuff through Amazon is bad for the environment/neighborhood. Amazon gets away with inefficient shipping because they afford to, and Bezos knows where American economy is, and will stay. There will always be a huge pool of unemployed/underemployed/desperate people who will begrudgingly deliver his product. It will be the working poor bringing stuff to the rich. Bezos could care less about trucks speeding through neighborhoods; he's not going to live outside the gate. He could care less about gas use. That's someone else's worry. His worry is making big money. For what? He's past middle age. I wouldn't be so hard on the guy if he provided good jobs. Your mom shoppping once a week is more efficient/moral than having a bunch of trucks delivering one, and two products multiple times a day. They will have us debating this forever. Moral? At one time, grocery unions were kinda srtrong. Today they are essentially gone. Delivery drivers will eventually loose all union representation. In all honestly, if Bezos doesn't start paying his employees, and tangential employees more; I'll look into buying straight from China, and bypassing Amazon completely. The wealthy are selling out, why don't we?

shadofx 9y ago

+delivery truck can serve the entire neighborhood, saving gas from everyone's cars +frequent restocking means you can use a smaller, more energy efficient refrigerator +frequent restocking potentially means fresher food -supply is centralized, if a disaster occurs making the shipping center inaccessible you'll starve sooner -government/big biz can more finely monitor and control your food supply

xapata 9y ago

You're not considering the energy and waste of maintaining many retail outlets throughout the city.