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I am interested in this but a little skeptical we can pin down the carbon economics. I think about this a lot in my own life. I'm in a major US metro. I buy mos

I am interested in this but a little skeptical we can pin down the carbon economics. I think about this a lot in my own life. I'm in a major US metro. I buy most of my non-food stuff online on Amazon. I could drive my hybrid to a Target (~5 mile round trip) instead. My sense is my hybrid is slightly more efficient in raw carbon emissions than an Amazon delivery truck, but I live an apartment building, so the average Amazon delivery driver drops off 20 or 30 packages as part of a route that probably has hundreds of packages, so probably marginally Amazon has a lot less carbon load for the last leg than me going to Target? Since Amazon has a staging warehouse in my city, I assume the carbon profile up until the last leg is similar (although maybe Amazon populates that warehouse with air shipping instead of ground shipping, who knows for sure). But then Amazon also uses a bunch of packaging. The cardboard packaging is putatively recyclable, except for the collapse of paper/cardboard recycling in the US last year. I still recycle it, but it's probably being landfilled. The plastic packaging is just landfill waste. And even if the cardboard was being recycled, there's a huge water burden involved in the production of recycled paper products as I imagine it, so trading off carbon emissions versus local water consumption / drought risk seems like a problem. If someone made a website or app that allowed me to visualize all this for each purchase I make, I think that would be mondo cool -- and as dsalzman's comment to this thread mentions, this could be an opportunity to tie into a carbon offset service or something else to automatically compensate, at least partially, for the efficiency gap. Come to think of it, that leads to another cost I hadn't considered before: at least theoretically, the money I save on Amazon frees up money for offsets or environmentally friendly donations versus paying more elsewhere. (Although in practice my total donations per year come nowhere close to what I save). I'd also be curious today whether picking slower shipping on Amazon reduces or increases the carbon burden of the transaction versus prime shipping versus faster shipping.

benologist 7y ago
Amazon actually keep their carbon footprint secret. They have a vague plan to have half their shipping and AWS be fully green by 2030, during which time AWS alone will net about another hundred billion dollars in profit. The secrecy and their laggard response despite immense profits does not make me optimistic about their carbon footprint today. https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/05/25/amazon-carbon-footprint-analysis-cbs/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/05/25/amazon-carbon-f... https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/19/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-announces-new-climate-pledge-ahead-employee-protests/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/19/amazon-...
- lucb1e 7y ago
  Wait, half their shipping green by 2030? That's both too little and too late. If it had been fully green in 2025 or so... they easily make enough profit to at least fund compensation programs (like Climeworks' recapturing) for the part of CO2 that is currently required for flying the planes (since there is not yet a practical alternative to flying fuel-based planes, that's one area where compensation currently makes sense given that emission can't be avoided).
lucb1e 7y ago
> I live an apartment building, so the average Amazon delivery driver drops off 20 or 30 packages as part of a route that probably has hundreds of packages, so probably marginally Amazon has a lot less carbon load for the last leg than me going to Target? Hard question to answer. As another datapoint, I did hear from some researcher in a podcast that deliveries are ecologically much worse than going to the store. I've mentioned this on HN a few weeks ago[1], but I'll cite the points for convenience. The original[2] is in Flemish, so any translation mistakes are on me. These were the reasons given for why ordering packages is less ecological: - Many disparate products moved to many individual homes (many to many makes for a lot of 'movements', fragmentation) - 15-20% of people is not home during a delivery attempt (useless impact) - Returns are equally bad (people order 8 pairs of shoes knowing they'll send 7 back) - Different delivery companies cause even more fragmentation (driving to the same home) If I remember correctly (I didn't watch/listen it back anymore since 24 days), there wasn't really a question about it -- at least in Belgium -- that ordering is worse. Like, no exceptions were mentioned if I remember correctly. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21373578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21373578 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRqKEK_xJvc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRqKEK_xJvc
zacherates 7y ago
This is actually the beauty of a carbon tax. Instead of trying to figure out all the costs, you tax pumping the carbon out of the ground and then let the prices flow through the economy. That way you don't have to try to figure it out as an individual you just end up comparing Amazon's delivery prices to a tank of gas, which you're doing anyway because you already have to manage your own budget.
- jmole 7y ago
  A carbon tax is only effective for climate/carbon mitigation if the tax revenue is reserved for those kinds of efforts - which historically has been difficult to achieve.
  - davidw 7y ago
    That doesn't make sense. A carbon tax works because it makes more carbon-intensive activities/goods relatively more expensive compared with less carbon-intensive activities/goods, so you're giving people a financial incentive to use less of it.
  - benhurmarcel 7y ago
    No, that's not the case. A carbon tax is effective regardless of the use of the revenue.
- benhurmarcel 7y ago
  But then the state needs to estimate the carbon emission of every imported good and service.
  - jogjayr 7y ago
    Nope. Read that comment again. Tax the carbon coming out of the ground. That's easy to measure - it's however many barrels of petroleum or nat gas or coal is being sold. The effects of that tax cascade through the rest of the economy.
    - 7y ago
benhurmarcel 7y ago
If you're getting into these kinds of considerations for Amazon packages, you should consider the added transportation and re-packaging they go through: https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20961523/amazon-walmart-target-package-delivery-sales-tax-montana-roundup https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20961523/amazon-walmart-...

benologist 7y ago

Amazon actually keep their carbon footprint secret. They have a vague plan to have half their shipping and AWS be fully green by 2030, during which time AWS alone will net about another hundred billion dollars in profit. The secrecy and their laggard response despite immense profits does not make me optimistic about their carbon footprint today. https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/05/25/amazon-carbon-footprint-analysis-cbs/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/05/25/amazon-carbon-f... https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/19/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-announces-new-climate-pledge-ahead-employee-protests/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/19/amazon-...

lucb1e 7y ago
Wait, half their shipping green by 2030? That's both too little and too late. If it had been fully green in 2025 or so... they easily make enough profit to at least fund compensation programs (like Climeworks' recapturing) for the part of CO2 that is currently required for flying the planes (since there is not yet a practical alternative to flying fuel-based planes, that's one area where compensation currently makes sense given that emission can't be avoided).

lucb1e 7y ago

> I live an apartment building, so the average Amazon delivery driver drops off 20 or 30 packages as part of a route that probably has hundreds of packages, so probably marginally Amazon has a lot less carbon load for the last leg than me going to Target? Hard question to answer. As another datapoint, I did hear from some researcher in a podcast that deliveries are ecologically much worse than going to the store. I've mentioned this on HN a few weeks ago[1], but I'll cite the points for convenience. The original[2] is in Flemish, so any translation mistakes are on me. These were the reasons given for why ordering packages is less ecological: - Many disparate products moved to many individual homes (many to many makes for a lot of 'movements', fragmentation) - 15-20% of people is not home during a delivery attempt (useless impact) - Returns are equally bad (people order 8 pairs of shoes knowing they'll send 7 back) - Different delivery companies cause even more fragmentation (driving to the same home) If I remember correctly (I didn't watch/listen it back anymore since 24 days), there wasn't really a question about it -- at least in Belgium -- that ordering is worse. Like, no exceptions were mentioned if I remember correctly. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21373578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21373578 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRqKEK_xJvc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRqKEK_xJvc

zacherates 7y ago

This is actually the beauty of a carbon tax. Instead of trying to figure out all the costs, you tax pumping the carbon out of the ground and then let the prices flow through the economy. That way you don't have to try to figure it out as an individual you just end up comparing Amazon's delivery prices to a tank of gas, which you're doing anyway because you already have to manage your own budget.

jmole 7y ago
A carbon tax is only effective for climate/carbon mitigation if the tax revenue is reserved for those kinds of efforts - which historically has been difficult to achieve.
- davidw 7y ago
  That doesn't make sense. A carbon tax works because it makes more carbon-intensive activities/goods relatively more expensive compared with less carbon-intensive activities/goods, so you're giving people a financial incentive to use less of it.
- benhurmarcel 7y ago
  No, that's not the case. A carbon tax is effective regardless of the use of the revenue.
benhurmarcel 7y ago
But then the state needs to estimate the carbon emission of every imported good and service.
- jogjayr 7y ago
  Nope. Read that comment again. Tax the carbon coming out of the ground. That's easy to measure - it's however many barrels of petroleum or nat gas or coal is being sold. The effects of that tax cascade through the rest of the economy.
  - 7y ago

benhurmarcel 7y ago

If you're getting into these kinds of considerations for Amazon packages, you should consider the added transportation and re-packaging they go through: https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20961523/amazon-walmart-target-package-delivery-sales-tax-montana-roundup https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/14/20961523/amazon-walmart-...