7 ms·

2-3 times per day? Until transports are carbon neutral, free shipping should be made illegal....

by walkingolof 6y ago

rat9988 6y ago
Using cars too I'd guess then?
- walkingolof 6y ago
  Cars are not free, one of the biggest household budget posts.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    what's a budget post? I don't think I've ever heard that term before.
- Agreed99 6y ago
  Sure, why not It is nothing more than an entitled demand of a minority of the species that can afford them Why should that be justification enough to destroy the planet for the entire species?
onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
Amazon is probably batching a lot of these orders into one delivery.
- RobinL 6y ago
  I'm really curious about this. I've noticed though time Amazon seem to be batching orders less often (This is in the UK, and merely anecdotal.) I was recently looking at the courier's parcel tracking app, i was interested recently to see that my delivery was '120 stops away'. If this is typical, the marginal cost of delivering a parcel must be small in terms of miles driven and driver time. (Obviously this is highly contingent on population density). Another good example of this is Royal Mail, where the cost of a marginal piece of post or small parcel must be tiny (since the postman is already delivering to 50%+ addresses every day). It occurred to me that in some situations, it might actually be more efficient _not_ to batch. The complexity of attempting to batch at the warehouse must be very high, and take up quite a bit of warehouse space, and slow down dispatch significantly. A related and relevant observations why are courier companies not a natural monopoly? If the marginal cost of delivery were high, a courier company with higher volumes would naturally make more profit, and so the market would push in the direction of fewer bigger couriers. This seems to suggest that the volume of parcels means that we're already in a situation where couriers are pretty efficient and marginal costs are low. It'd be interesting to know empirically how this works out.
  - xyzzyz 6y ago
    > A related and relevant observations why are courier companies not a natural monopoly? If the marginal cost of delivery were high, a courier company with higher volumes would naturally make more profit, and so the market would push in the direction of fewer bigger couriers. I think you are onto something, that the courier business enjoys huge advantage from economies of scale. However, I think that there is no actual monopoly, because the advantage of higher volume in last-mile delivery probably saturates fast enough that you can take it all at relatively low total levels of volume. For example, if you have higher volumes, you can optimize courier routes so that they waste less time driving around. However, at some point fixed per-package overhead like parking getting in and out of the truck, walking up to front door, etc become so large that time spent actually moving between deliveries becomes smaller and smaller part of your time, and so optimizing it becomes less and less valuable. Then, the issue is how much volume you need to hit that level, and I think that the answer is "much less than monopoly level".
  - switch11 6y ago
    This is a fascinating comment In particular -> It occurred to me that in some situations, it might actually be more efficient _not_ to batch. The complexity of attempting to batch at the warehouse must be very high, and take up quite a bit of warehouse space, and slow down dispatch significantly.
ericmay 6y ago
It's not like Amazon (or others) dispatch one truck with one item per order. They will batch these to save cost, and I have to imagine it's more carbon friendly than having an individual car from every household making trips, parking in parking lots, etc. etc.
- untog 6y ago
  I’m consistently surprised by how bad Amazon is at this. Admittedly this might be because I’m in NYC and there are multiple distribution centers but even when I specifically choose to have things bundled up and delivered at once on my “Prime Day” (or whatever they call it) they still deliver separately on different days. Not the end of the world but it does annoy me. I’ve been doing a bunch of shopping at Target since the pandemic too, to balance out reliance on Amazon. They’re much better at delivering items together on the day they originally state.
  - mynameishere 6y ago
    Try ordering online from Walmart. You might order five items and get four packages in four days. Amazon used to be like this 15+ years ago.
siliconmountain 6y ago
A delivery to ten houses from one delivery truck is less carbon than ten household cars driving to the store (10 roundtrips). Or more likely, 2-3 different stores per each household. What you propose would reverse that and increase carbon. Its also worth pointing out theyre moving to electric delivery vans
- EdwinLarkin 6y ago
  But it's also an example of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
- tgv 6y ago
  That would entirely depend on the distance to the store, and the assumption you'd always use a car.
  - moooo99 6y ago
    > the assumption you'd always use a car. which seems like a reasonable assumption for anyone - living in a rural area - living only close to a city but not within - city parts with poor public transport connections Also, the kind of product also heavily influences that. For more specialized products, people tend to be willing to drive longer distances, therefore making the carbon emissions worse. If the store doesn't carry the item but has to order it first, it also means you double the round trips. Overall, Amazon certainly has a massive environmental impact, including GHG emissions, but in terms of emissions, everyone going to the store by themselves wouldn't really be a better option I imagine.
    - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
      > which seems like a reasonable assumption for anyone Absolutely not. There's plenty of people who live without needing cars.
      - pdpi 6y ago
        The gp itemised which sorts of people they were talking about
cm2012 6y ago
It's way more carbon efficient than driving to three different stores in a day yourself.
- joijoiwejrr 6y ago
  But far less carbon-efficient than just not buying so much unnecessary crap in the first place.
  - anonuser123456 6y ago
    Moralizing hasn't solved the obesity crisis, so I don't think it will solve the climate crisis either.
TulliusCicero 6y ago
Good point, let's also make driving yourself to the store illegal unless you hit a minimum item count while there. Companies already have a natural incentive to batch orders, because doing so reduces their costs. I don't think you need to lean on them to do what they already want to do.
- zaroth 6y ago
  I have a better idea. Let’s make driving to the store a net positive for the environment, and then people can do it as much as they damn well please.
  - moooo99 6y ago
    Considering the overall environmental impact of any personal vehicle on the street, regardless of power source, that seems like a close to impossible task. Public transit seems like a promising solution, but only goes so far. With the strong automotive industry here in Germany, there is no incentive to get cars off the streets.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    > Let’s make driving to the store a net positive for the environment. Impossible. Even if the car is powered by renewable electricity, each trip to the store contributes to wear and tear on the vehicle, and the parts on the vehicle were almost certainly not produced with renewable energy but with polluting sources, and plus the industrial process producing them likely produces some toxic waste.
    - repsilat 6y ago
      They meant by pricing the externalities. An emissions trading scheme can mean that carbon-emitting activities just displace each other. A carbon tax can mean that carbon-emitting activities can result in net reductions in emissions. Road user charges, taxes on vehicles bought, you get the picture.
mgraupner 6y ago
I wish Amazon would offer some "green" packaging for items not needed immediately. Pool them and then send them out together, not in 5 different packages by 3 delivery companies.
- lyngford 6y ago
  They do offer that in the Amazon Day program - "Order throughout the week and select FREE Amazon Day Delivery to get all your items in fewer boxes on a single day"
  - mgraupner 6y ago
    Cool, may I ask in which country you live? Unfortunately it's not (yet) available here in Germany.
    - maskedinvader 6y ago
      This seems to be available only in US unfortunately. https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/28/amazon-prime-members-can-choose-a-weekly-delivery-date-with-launch-of-amazon-day/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/28/amazon-prime-members-can-c...
  - lkbm 6y ago
    I ordered some Christmas presents to be delivered to my parents' house yesterday and was amused to see that I could choose to have them delivered on my Amazon Day. Seems like Amazon Day should be tied to an address, not an account, but I guess it's an edge-case not worth addressing.
- badwolf 6y ago
  In addition to the other commenter's "Amazon Day Delivery" option, I often also have another option of "No rush delivery" which usually includes $1-$5 credit for digital items (ebooks, music, movies...) - https://imgur.com/a/XtmOmv3 https://imgur.com/a/XtmOmv3
- i_love_music 6y ago
anonuser123456 6y ago
Or... we could just tax carbon.
- kmonsen 6y ago
  This is what everyone thinks is the only solution, the issue is that it will have different winners and losers than today. And some of the current winners that will be losers have immense political capital and are willing to spend it.
  - NumberWangMan 6y ago
    I don't think it's the only solution, but it's pretty much a necessary part of any comprehensive plan of attack. It's the best tool we have. You're totally right that some current "winners" who benefit from the current state of affairs are fighting and will continue to fight it. That's the case of any major change worth making, though, I think.
  - anonuser123456 6y ago
    So we just pay the losers a fee to go away. If that means giving Exxon, BP, Shell ... a trillion dollars to just cap all their wells and F'off.... fine. Amortize it over 100 years and pay it down with the tax revenue from carbon.
    - triceratops 6y ago
      Fine. As long as we also charge them damages for lying to the public about climate change for all these years.
      - anonuser123456 6y ago
        Consumers willingly purchase and burn hydrocarbons. Joe average consumer is as culpable as some C-suite executive. And the only viable alternative until very recently... nuclear... is endlessly disparaged as unsafe by 'save the earth' types. So as far as I'm concerned, the green movement is equally culpable on the lying front. Should we charge the Sierra Club luddites too?
LockAndLol 6y ago
And once again the responses are about personal rights and freedoms while ignoring the good of society and the planet. This is exactly why developing countries tell first-world countries to shove their lofty and hypocritical demands for others to reduce their carbon footprint. If first-world countries and their citizens can't be bothered to reduce their consumption and behavior, why should developing nations? Especially the comments about "batching orders" somehow having an impact is just ludicrous. Aren't we in a thread about a company forced to hire more people because of the amount of orders coming in, forcing more deliveries? How does it not click in your brains that more orders = more boxes = more resource consumption = more drives = more weight = more fuel consumption = more carbon?
sib 6y ago
They do a lot of work to combine multiple orders placed within short windows (motivated by cost savings, rather than carbon savings, but the effect is the same)...

2-3 times per day? Until transports are carbon neutral, free shipping should be made illegal....

rat9988 6y ago

Using cars too I'd guess then?

walkingolof 6y ago
Cars are not free, one of the biggest household budget posts.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  what's a budget post? I don't think I've ever heard that term before.
Agreed99 6y ago
Sure, why not It is nothing more than an entitled demand of a minority of the species that can afford them Why should that be justification enough to destroy the planet for the entire species?

onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago

Amazon is probably batching a lot of these orders into one delivery.

RobinL 6y ago
I'm really curious about this. I've noticed though time Amazon seem to be batching orders less often (This is in the UK, and merely anecdotal.) I was recently looking at the courier's parcel tracking app, i was interested recently to see that my delivery was '120 stops away'. If this is typical, the marginal cost of delivering a parcel must be small in terms of miles driven and driver time. (Obviously this is highly contingent on population density). Another good example of this is Royal Mail, where the cost of a marginal piece of post or small parcel must be tiny (since the postman is already delivering to 50%+ addresses every day). It occurred to me that in some situations, it might actually be more efficient _not_ to batch. The complexity of attempting to batch at the warehouse must be very high, and take up quite a bit of warehouse space, and slow down dispatch significantly. A related and relevant observations why are courier companies not a natural monopoly? If the marginal cost of delivery were high, a courier company with higher volumes would naturally make more profit, and so the market would push in the direction of fewer bigger couriers. This seems to suggest that the volume of parcels means that we're already in a situation where couriers are pretty efficient and marginal costs are low. It'd be interesting to know empirically how this works out.
- xyzzyz 6y ago
  > A related and relevant observations why are courier companies not a natural monopoly? If the marginal cost of delivery were high, a courier company with higher volumes would naturally make more profit, and so the market would push in the direction of fewer bigger couriers. I think you are onto something, that the courier business enjoys huge advantage from economies of scale. However, I think that there is no actual monopoly, because the advantage of higher volume in last-mile delivery probably saturates fast enough that you can take it all at relatively low total levels of volume. For example, if you have higher volumes, you can optimize courier routes so that they waste less time driving around. However, at some point fixed per-package overhead like parking getting in and out of the truck, walking up to front door, etc become so large that time spent actually moving between deliveries becomes smaller and smaller part of your time, and so optimizing it becomes less and less valuable. Then, the issue is how much volume you need to hit that level, and I think that the answer is "much less than monopoly level".
- switch11 6y ago
  This is a fascinating comment In particular -> It occurred to me that in some situations, it might actually be more efficient _not_ to batch. The complexity of attempting to batch at the warehouse must be very high, and take up quite a bit of warehouse space, and slow down dispatch significantly.

ericmay 6y ago

It's not like Amazon (or others) dispatch one truck with one item per order. They will batch these to save cost, and I have to imagine it's more carbon friendly than having an individual car from every household making trips, parking in parking lots, etc. etc.

untog 6y ago
I’m consistently surprised by how bad Amazon is at this. Admittedly this might be because I’m in NYC and there are multiple distribution centers but even when I specifically choose to have things bundled up and delivered at once on my “Prime Day” (or whatever they call it) they still deliver separately on different days. Not the end of the world but it does annoy me. I’ve been doing a bunch of shopping at Target since the pandemic too, to balance out reliance on Amazon. They’re much better at delivering items together on the day they originally state.
- mynameishere 6y ago
  Try ordering online from Walmart. You might order five items and get four packages in four days. Amazon used to be like this 15+ years ago.

siliconmountain 6y ago

A delivery to ten houses from one delivery truck is less carbon than ten household cars driving to the store (10 roundtrips). Or more likely, 2-3 different stores per each household. What you propose would reverse that and increase carbon. Its also worth pointing out theyre moving to electric delivery vans

EdwinLarkin 6y ago
But it's also an example of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
tgv 6y ago
That would entirely depend on the distance to the store, and the assumption you'd always use a car.
- moooo99 6y ago
  > the assumption you'd always use a car. which seems like a reasonable assumption for anyone - living in a rural area - living only close to a city but not within - city parts with poor public transport connections Also, the kind of product also heavily influences that. For more specialized products, people tend to be willing to drive longer distances, therefore making the carbon emissions worse. If the store doesn't carry the item but has to order it first, it also means you double the round trips. Overall, Amazon certainly has a massive environmental impact, including GHG emissions, but in terms of emissions, everyone going to the store by themselves wouldn't really be a better option I imagine.
  - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
    > which seems like a reasonable assumption for anyone Absolutely not. There's plenty of people who live without needing cars.
    - pdpi 6y ago
      The gp itemised which sorts of people they were talking about

cm2012 6y ago

It's way more carbon efficient than driving to three different stores in a day yourself.

joijoiwejrr 6y ago
But far less carbon-efficient than just not buying so much unnecessary crap in the first place.
- anonuser123456 6y ago
  Moralizing hasn't solved the obesity crisis, so I don't think it will solve the climate crisis either.

TulliusCicero 6y ago

Good point, let's also make driving yourself to the store illegal unless you hit a minimum item count while there. Companies already have a natural incentive to batch orders, because doing so reduces their costs. I don't think you need to lean on them to do what they already want to do.

zaroth 6y ago
I have a better idea. Let’s make driving to the store a net positive for the environment, and then people can do it as much as they damn well please.
- moooo99 6y ago
  Considering the overall environmental impact of any personal vehicle on the street, regardless of power source, that seems like a close to impossible task. Public transit seems like a promising solution, but only goes so far. With the strong automotive industry here in Germany, there is no incentive to get cars off the streets.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  > Let’s make driving to the store a net positive for the environment. Impossible. Even if the car is powered by renewable electricity, each trip to the store contributes to wear and tear on the vehicle, and the parts on the vehicle were almost certainly not produced with renewable energy but with polluting sources, and plus the industrial process producing them likely produces some toxic waste.
  - repsilat 6y ago
    They meant by pricing the externalities. An emissions trading scheme can mean that carbon-emitting activities just displace each other. A carbon tax can mean that carbon-emitting activities can result in net reductions in emissions. Road user charges, taxes on vehicles bought, you get the picture.

mgraupner 6y ago

I wish Amazon would offer some "green" packaging for items not needed immediately. Pool them and then send them out together, not in 5 different packages by 3 delivery companies.

lyngford 6y ago
They do offer that in the Amazon Day program - "Order throughout the week and select FREE Amazon Day Delivery to get all your items in fewer boxes on a single day"
- mgraupner 6y ago
  Cool, may I ask in which country you live? Unfortunately it's not (yet) available here in Germany.
  - maskedinvader 6y ago
    This seems to be available only in US unfortunately. https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/28/amazon-prime-members-can-choose-a-weekly-delivery-date-with-launch-of-amazon-day/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/28/amazon-prime-members-can-c...
- lkbm 6y ago
  I ordered some Christmas presents to be delivered to my parents' house yesterday and was amused to see that I could choose to have them delivered on my Amazon Day. Seems like Amazon Day should be tied to an address, not an account, but I guess it's an edge-case not worth addressing.
badwolf 6y ago
In addition to the other commenter's "Amazon Day Delivery" option, I often also have another option of "No rush delivery" which usually includes $1-$5 credit for digital items (ebooks, music, movies...) - https://imgur.com/a/XtmOmv3 https://imgur.com/a/XtmOmv3
i_love_music 6y ago

anonuser123456 6y ago

Or... we could just tax carbon.

kmonsen 6y ago
This is what everyone thinks is the only solution, the issue is that it will have different winners and losers than today. And some of the current winners that will be losers have immense political capital and are willing to spend it.
- NumberWangMan 6y ago
  I don't think it's the only solution, but it's pretty much a necessary part of any comprehensive plan of attack. It's the best tool we have. You're totally right that some current "winners" who benefit from the current state of affairs are fighting and will continue to fight it. That's the case of any major change worth making, though, I think.
- anonuser123456 6y ago
  So we just pay the losers a fee to go away. If that means giving Exxon, BP, Shell ... a trillion dollars to just cap all their wells and F'off.... fine. Amortize it over 100 years and pay it down with the tax revenue from carbon.
  - triceratops 6y ago
    Fine. As long as we also charge them damages for lying to the public about climate change for all these years.
    - anonuser123456 6y ago
      Consumers willingly purchase and burn hydrocarbons. Joe average consumer is as culpable as some C-suite executive. And the only viable alternative until very recently... nuclear... is endlessly disparaged as unsafe by 'save the earth' types. So as far as I'm concerned, the green movement is equally culpable on the lying front. Should we charge the Sierra Club luddites too?

LockAndLol 6y ago

And once again the responses are about personal rights and freedoms while ignoring the good of society and the planet. This is exactly why developing countries tell first-world countries to shove their lofty and hypocritical demands for others to reduce their carbon footprint. If first-world countries and their citizens can't be bothered to reduce their consumption and behavior, why should developing nations? Especially the comments about "batching orders" somehow having an impact is just ludicrous. Aren't we in a thread about a company forced to hire more people because of the amount of orders coming in, forcing more deliveries? How does it not click in your brains that more orders = more boxes = more resource consumption = more drives = more weight = more fuel consumption = more carbon?

sib 6y ago

They do a lot of work to combine multiple orders placed within short windows (motivated by cost savings, rather than carbon savings, but the effect is the same)...