11 ms·

The hidden cost is the enormous strain it puts on the environment...

thih9 6y ago
Do you have a source for that or can you elaborate? Since the delivery time is so long, I’d expect the parcel gets shipped with multiple others. The only items that get shipped are the ones that have been actually bought, which sounds efficient. Of course there are negative aspects too and I wouldn’t know if the overall outcome is positive or negative, when compared to buying a product from Amazon. Again, a link or more details would be very helpful.
- mcv 6y ago
  Of course it gets shipped with others, and if delivery takes weeks or months, it probably gets shipped fairly efficiently by sea. But it still gets shipped over a long distance. I'd rather see more local products and less intercontinental shipment except in cases where it's unavoidable. Besides, a lot of products on AliExpress don't actually meet western safety standards. They're not allowed to be imported and sold here, but you can buy them abroad and ship them to a private customer. But they still won't meet our standards.
  - zuppy 6y ago
    I don't really see a difference, as most of the consummer products are built in China and get shipped anyway... I'm not denying the environmetal impact, but that's not from Ali Express, it's from us building everything there because it's cheaper.
    - mcv 6y ago
      There is an important difference between products built there and sold there, and products built there and sold here. The product have to obey safety and other standards of the country where they're sold. And those standards differ quite a lot between the EU and China. They can use banned chemicals, and fail many other requirements. In the EU, products that conform to EU standards can be identified with a 'CE' logo[0], which means "Conformité Européenne". "Chinese Export" can have a deceptively similar logo[1] that does not guarantee such adherence at all, but still looks comforting to European customers of Chinese web shops. It's a blatant violation, but hard to stop, because it's a foreign sale shipped to private customers. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking [1] https://siloscordoba.com/blog/corporate/china-export-is-not-ce-a-symbol-to-cause-confusion/ https://siloscordoba.com/blog/corporate/china-export-is-not-...
      - lozenge 6y ago
        There's no such thing as a Chinese Export or China Export mark, it's an urban myth (see your own link).
        mcv 6y ago
        Whether or not it exists seems to be mostly a matter of interpretation. Is the incorrect mark just a misprint while Chinese products with the correct mark are just as likely to fail to meet EU standards? Either way, that cheap products from China regularly fail the standards does not seem to be disputed by anyone. And if those products are sold in the EU, it's fairly easy to address, but if they're sold in China and mailed to the EU, it's not so easy to enforce. The problem remains the same, whether or not you see it as intentional or not.
        lozenge 6y ago
        It's the difference between deliberate (creating a confusing mark to legalistically "bypass" CE regulations - this is the myth) and negligence (China not bothering to enforce the standards set by other countries or even its own quality and safety standards - this is well known).
      - megous 6y ago
        Germany seems to care more than other EU countries about such things like CE. They don't have trouble turning away imports based just because it's shipped to private customers. Just ask people trying to receive PinePhones in Germany. You don't have a german manual? Bye bye, try again later.
      - jschwartzi 6y ago
        Similarly the UL logo and ETL Intertek logo serve the same purpose in the US. If something doesn’t have a UL logo it’s probably not safe.
    - missosoup 6y ago
      Huge difference. Products that are intended to be sold overseas are made to comply with the recipient country's safety standards (although the Chinese are notorious for cheating around that in every way they can and quality control + liability is ultimately up to the importer). Random shit that you buy on alibaba, isn't. There are several entire youtube channels dedicated to dismantling chinesium gadgets and showing how they'll burn your house down. Lack of reverse current protection, lack of overcurrent protection, trace spacing that's way too small and will arc under the right temp/humidity, mains side traces right next to each other, no grounding, ground shorted to neutral, under-rated caps and resistors that reach unsafely high temperatures, etc, etc.
  - netcan 6y ago
    I think you're barking up the wrong tree. There may be ways to be greener by manufacturing near consumers... but that doesn't have much to do with amazon vs alibaba. These products are manufactured in the same places.
    - mcv 6y ago
      Not sure what tree you think I'm barking up. I do think the issue of local production and less transportation is an important issue; not everything is just about Amazon and Alibaba. But even if you just focus on those, Amazon at least has to obey local standards for the country in which they sell. Products from Aliexpress only obey Chinese standards, which are very different. And sometimes they ship with misleading logos which could suggest to European customers that they obey EU rules when they don't.
      - cptskippy 6y ago
        > Amazon at least has to obey local standards for the country in which they sell. In theory. In practice resellers are free to dropship whatever they want from AliExpress to Amazon and sell at a markup.
        mcv 6y ago
        True. Amazon also clearly has a problem with counterfeit goods (as addressed on HN repeatedly in the past), and that's not sufficiently enforced. But at least it's possible to enforce. That's not to easy when the shop is outside your jurisdiction.
        netcan 6y ago
        I'm still not seeing your point. This is an article about postage. It's not about counterfeits or locally produced goods.
        cptskippy 6y ago
        Counterfeits are generally not locally produced and mostly come from China via the subsidized slow boat. The counterfeit industry exists on Amazon because the potential for profit is so high and the risk is almost non-existent.
  - baybal2 6y ago
    > delivery takes weeks or months, it probably gets shipped fairly efficiently by sea. No, most of goes around as airmail. In fact, actual physical transport times are super low. In fact, sea shipments can be faster than that. There are container lines shipping Shenzhen-Losangeles in just 7-10 days.
  - thih9 6y ago
    > But it still gets shipped over a long distance. So do Amazon products. > I'd rather see more local products How is that related? I asked for sources that would confirm claims about worse environmental impact of Aliexpress vs Amazon.
- sverhagen 6y ago
  With the enormous amount of stuff people order from AliExpress, it seems unreasonable that all of it gets shipped via excess capacity.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    I mean that's pretty much the whole trick to it. It gets to the boat with the rest of the mail, and batched with all the other people are shipping to the US, and then delivered to your door with the rest of the mail. I can't imagine that there's a significant environmental impact outside of what it already takes for normal imports and and your daily mail.
dogma1138 6y ago
Unless one of the cases is manufactured under considerably different environmental standards and locally that isn’t the case. The higher price on Amazon is due to two factors - local reseller markup and expedited shipping. Heck many AlizonExpress sellers will have multiple listings for the same product at different prices based on how fast they’ll ship. So we can safely assume that both items ship from China. So we can more or less safely assume that both are shipped from China. Now when you wait 4-6 weeks for a delivery from China you are essentially waiting for them to fill a container, when you pay more for a shipping you pay for the extra shipping space wasted by expediting your shipping. This is because of how international shipping economics work, international shipping is economical when it’s full to the brim since shipping companies have a flat tonnage tax. This means that shipping companies are taxed based on the total tonnage capacity of their vessels not the actual amount or value of the goods they transfer. Unless you source something locally in a manner that it’s actually environmentally more sounds that statement is false. And don’t forget that even buying locally doesn’t guarantee any better environmental outcome, for example buying a 3D printed case form someone on Etsy is likely just if not more polluting than buying an injection molded case from China since the filament, resin and heck even the 3D printer itself came form China.
- baybal2 6y ago
  I used to run a small business when I was in college in Canada 2010-2012, selling sunglasses on Ebay, and later Amazon. It was super low effort. Buy wholesale on Alibaba, tell the seller to send goods to packing, and silkscreen shop, and send by regular post to my apartment. Very often, fancy packaging was costing more than sunglasses themselves. Even when I was buying crate loads of goods, I only got a customs bill only like 2 times out of 10 in 3 years. Customs bill was pretty much nothing, and they never contested the valuation, but the extra paperwork was very unpleasant at the time when I had to study. Then you sell $1-$2-$3 sunglasses at $100+ prices. Just make decent websites for all made up brands you have, have good marketing fluff, and make sure to call them with some Italian/French sounding name. You make at around 10-15 sells per month, but what else you want with that level of effort? Second to that, I was very unsure of my tax/legal status at large if that business were to become too big. Being kicked out of the country, with all my money in that degree wouldn't be fun.
cjblomqvist 6y ago
Isn't it rather that someone else is taking the shipping cost?
bootlooped 6y ago
Just in terms of packaging waste it is definitely lower. Even tiny things from Amazon often come to me in a shoebox sized carboard box, even if they could have fit in a padded envelope or maybe even just shipped in the retail box. Ali Express things I have ordered almost universally come in a padded plastic envelope. I think there must be strong incentives to pack small and light, so the maximum amount of stuff fits in the container, whereas with Amazon the highest priority is to get it on the truck ASAP.

Do you have a source for that or can you elaborate? Since the delivery time is so long, I’d expect the parcel gets shipped with multiple others. The only items that get shipped are the ones that have been actually bought, which sounds efficient. Of course there are negative aspects too and I wouldn’t know if the overall outcome is positive or negative, when compared to buying a product from Amazon. Again, a link or more details would be very helpful.

mcv 6y ago
Of course it gets shipped with others, and if delivery takes weeks or months, it probably gets shipped fairly efficiently by sea. But it still gets shipped over a long distance. I'd rather see more local products and less intercontinental shipment except in cases where it's unavoidable. Besides, a lot of products on AliExpress don't actually meet western safety standards. They're not allowed to be imported and sold here, but you can buy them abroad and ship them to a private customer. But they still won't meet our standards.
- zuppy 6y ago
  I don't really see a difference, as most of the consummer products are built in China and get shipped anyway... I'm not denying the environmetal impact, but that's not from Ali Express, it's from us building everything there because it's cheaper.
  - mcv 6y ago
    There is an important difference between products built there and sold there, and products built there and sold here. The product have to obey safety and other standards of the country where they're sold. And those standards differ quite a lot between the EU and China. They can use banned chemicals, and fail many other requirements. In the EU, products that conform to EU standards can be identified with a 'CE' logo[0], which means "Conformité Européenne". "Chinese Export" can have a deceptively similar logo[1] that does not guarantee such adherence at all, but still looks comforting to European customers of Chinese web shops. It's a blatant violation, but hard to stop, because it's a foreign sale shipped to private customers. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking [1] https://siloscordoba.com/blog/corporate/china-export-is-not-ce-a-symbol-to-cause-confusion/ https://siloscordoba.com/blog/corporate/china-export-is-not-...
    - lozenge 6y ago
      There's no such thing as a Chinese Export or China Export mark, it's an urban myth (see your own link).
      - mcv 6y ago
        Whether or not it exists seems to be mostly a matter of interpretation. Is the incorrect mark just a misprint while Chinese products with the correct mark are just as likely to fail to meet EU standards? Either way, that cheap products from China regularly fail the standards does not seem to be disputed by anyone. And if those products are sold in the EU, it's fairly easy to address, but if they're sold in China and mailed to the EU, it's not so easy to enforce. The problem remains the same, whether or not you see it as intentional or not.
        lozenge 6y ago
        It's the difference between deliberate (creating a confusing mark to legalistically "bypass" CE regulations - this is the myth) and negligence (China not bothering to enforce the standards set by other countries or even its own quality and safety standards - this is well known).
    - megous 6y ago
      Germany seems to care more than other EU countries about such things like CE. They don't have trouble turning away imports based just because it's shipped to private customers. Just ask people trying to receive PinePhones in Germany. You don't have a german manual? Bye bye, try again later.
    - jschwartzi 6y ago
      Similarly the UL logo and ETL Intertek logo serve the same purpose in the US. If something doesn’t have a UL logo it’s probably not safe.
  - missosoup 6y ago
    Huge difference. Products that are intended to be sold overseas are made to comply with the recipient country's safety standards (although the Chinese are notorious for cheating around that in every way they can and quality control + liability is ultimately up to the importer). Random shit that you buy on alibaba, isn't. There are several entire youtube channels dedicated to dismantling chinesium gadgets and showing how they'll burn your house down. Lack of reverse current protection, lack of overcurrent protection, trace spacing that's way too small and will arc under the right temp/humidity, mains side traces right next to each other, no grounding, ground shorted to neutral, under-rated caps and resistors that reach unsafely high temperatures, etc, etc.
- netcan 6y ago
  I think you're barking up the wrong tree. There may be ways to be greener by manufacturing near consumers... but that doesn't have much to do with amazon vs alibaba. These products are manufactured in the same places.
  - mcv 6y ago
    Not sure what tree you think I'm barking up. I do think the issue of local production and less transportation is an important issue; not everything is just about Amazon and Alibaba. But even if you just focus on those, Amazon at least has to obey local standards for the country in which they sell. Products from Aliexpress only obey Chinese standards, which are very different. And sometimes they ship with misleading logos which could suggest to European customers that they obey EU rules when they don't.
    - cptskippy 6y ago
      > Amazon at least has to obey local standards for the country in which they sell. In theory. In practice resellers are free to dropship whatever they want from AliExpress to Amazon and sell at a markup.
      - mcv 6y ago
        True. Amazon also clearly has a problem with counterfeit goods (as addressed on HN repeatedly in the past), and that's not sufficiently enforced. But at least it's possible to enforce. That's not to easy when the shop is outside your jurisdiction.
        netcan 6y ago
        I'm still not seeing your point. This is an article about postage. It's not about counterfeits or locally produced goods.
        cptskippy 6y ago
        Counterfeits are generally not locally produced and mostly come from China via the subsidized slow boat. The counterfeit industry exists on Amazon because the potential for profit is so high and the risk is almost non-existent.
- baybal2 6y ago
  > delivery takes weeks or months, it probably gets shipped fairly efficiently by sea. No, most of goes around as airmail. In fact, actual physical transport times are super low. In fact, sea shipments can be faster than that. There are container lines shipping Shenzhen-Losangeles in just 7-10 days.
- thih9 6y ago
  > But it still gets shipped over a long distance. So do Amazon products. > I'd rather see more local products How is that related? I asked for sources that would confirm claims about worse environmental impact of Aliexpress vs Amazon.
sverhagen 6y ago
With the enormous amount of stuff people order from AliExpress, it seems unreasonable that all of it gets shipped via excess capacity.
- Spivak 6y ago
  I mean that's pretty much the whole trick to it. It gets to the boat with the rest of the mail, and batched with all the other people are shipping to the US, and then delivered to your door with the rest of the mail. I can't imagine that there's a significant environmental impact outside of what it already takes for normal imports and and your daily mail.

dogma1138 6y ago

Unless one of the cases is manufactured under considerably different environmental standards and locally that isn’t the case. The higher price on Amazon is due to two factors - local reseller markup and expedited shipping. Heck many AlizonExpress sellers will have multiple listings for the same product at different prices based on how fast they’ll ship. So we can safely assume that both items ship from China. So we can more or less safely assume that both are shipped from China. Now when you wait 4-6 weeks for a delivery from China you are essentially waiting for them to fill a container, when you pay more for a shipping you pay for the extra shipping space wasted by expediting your shipping. This is because of how international shipping economics work, international shipping is economical when it’s full to the brim since shipping companies have a flat tonnage tax. This means that shipping companies are taxed based on the total tonnage capacity of their vessels not the actual amount or value of the goods they transfer. Unless you source something locally in a manner that it’s actually environmentally more sounds that statement is false. And don’t forget that even buying locally doesn’t guarantee any better environmental outcome, for example buying a 3D printed case form someone on Etsy is likely just if not more polluting than buying an injection molded case from China since the filament, resin and heck even the 3D printer itself came form China.

baybal2 6y ago
I used to run a small business when I was in college in Canada 2010-2012, selling sunglasses on Ebay, and later Amazon. It was super low effort. Buy wholesale on Alibaba, tell the seller to send goods to packing, and silkscreen shop, and send by regular post to my apartment. Very often, fancy packaging was costing more than sunglasses themselves. Even when I was buying crate loads of goods, I only got a customs bill only like 2 times out of 10 in 3 years. Customs bill was pretty much nothing, and they never contested the valuation, but the extra paperwork was very unpleasant at the time when I had to study. Then you sell $1-$2-$3 sunglasses at $100+ prices. Just make decent websites for all made up brands you have, have good marketing fluff, and make sure to call them with some Italian/French sounding name. You make at around 10-15 sells per month, but what else you want with that level of effort? Second to that, I was very unsure of my tax/legal status at large if that business were to become too big. Being kicked out of the country, with all my money in that degree wouldn't be fun.

cjblomqvist 6y ago

Isn't it rather that someone else is taking the shipping cost?

bootlooped 6y ago

Just in terms of packaging waste it is definitely lower. Even tiny things from Amazon often come to me in a shoebox sized carboard box, even if they could have fit in a padded envelope or maybe even just shipped in the retail box. Ali Express things I have ordered almost universally come in a padded plastic envelope. I think there must be strong incentives to pack small and light, so the maximum amount of stuff fits in the container, whereas with Amazon the highest priority is to get it on the truck ASAP.