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The percentage unit cost and environmental impact of shipping electronics from China (or between any two points on earth near a major harbor) on a cargo vessel

by hedora 3y ago

The percentage unit cost and environmental impact of shipping electronics from China (or between any two points on earth near a major harbor) on a cargo vessel is zero. If the labor in China is cheaper than the robot + the person that operates the robot, then it is cheaper to build it there. Building it locally only makes economic sense if the design is changing frequently (e.g., using local pick and place for prototyping), or if it is built to order, so the time it spends on the boat actually matters. As an extreme example, giant Italian windows cost about the same, delivered, in the US as inferior domestic ones do. The main downside is the lead time. In particular, thanks to a drought, traffic through the panama canal is all screwed up these days, so getting them to the west coast is hard. If the economics tilt this way for shipping giant panes of glass, they certainly also do for tiny, high priced electronic devices. Of course, externalities (e.g., environmental impact of Chinese manufacturing, human rights, national security and xenophobia) could change the tradeoffs.

bmitc 3y ago
> environmental impact of shipping electronics from China (or between any two points on earth near a major harbor) on a cargo vessel is zero How does that work? Or are you just referring to electronic components only and it being zero relatively speaking?
- NhanH 3y ago
  Modern container cargo ships are huge. Even though in aggregate the absolute pollution is a big numbers, when you amortize over the volume, shipping an item has about a very close to zero impact on environment. And this is not some hand-waving explanation either, since other factors dominates the environmental impact (for example, shipping from Newegg to your office is probably a magnitude more polluted), it doesn't matter if the factory is in China or the US. This applies to a lot more things, even lower value stuffs like fruit. Which is why local produce might have more environmental impact than imported mass produce fruits, though I don't have a citation for this on hand.
  - TJSomething 3y ago
    I would add that the numbers are possible to compare, but container shipping is pretty efficient. One container from Shenzhen to Oakland (~10,000 km) is going to be the CO₂ equivalent of burning 60 gallons of gasoline.
  - diydsp 3y ago
    "According to Irene Blooming, a spokeswoman for the European environmental coalition Seas at Risk, the fuel used in oil tankers and container ships is high in sulfur and cheaper to buy compared to the fuel used for domestic land use. "A ship lets out around 50 times more sulfur than a lorry per tonne of cargo carried."[1] "Of total global air emissions, marine shipping accounts for 18 to 30 percent of the nitrogen oxides and 9% of the sulfur oxides."[1] "One source of environmental stresses on maritime vessels recently has come from states and localities, as they assess the contribution of commercial marine vessels to regional air quality problems when ships are docked at port.[33] For instance, large marine diesel engines are believed to contribute 7 percent of mobile source nitrogen oxide emissions in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana. Ships can also have a significant impact in areas without large commercial ports: they contribute about 37 percent of total area nitrogen oxide emissions in the Santa Barbara, California area, and that percentage is expected to increase to 61 percent by 2015."[1] " Maritime transport accounts for 3.5% to 4% of all greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide.[1][27] According to the World Bank, in 2022, the shipping industry's 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions make it "the sixth largest greenhouse gas emitter worldwide, ranking between Japan and Germany."[1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_shipping https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_shi...
    - K0balt 3y ago
      While this is true, if you were to calculate the last-mile carbon cost it would be much, much higher. A full container of goods costs about 60 gallons of diesel to ship across the world. That same container costs 60 gallons to move 360 miles from a port. Delivery vehicles drive approximately 0.8 miles per package delivered, and get around 10-20mpg delivering, so each package costs 1/10 to 1/20 of a gallon of fuel to deliver from the depot to your door. Assuming there are 4000 eventual packages in a container, the last mile delivery for the container is 200-400 gallons. Obviously this is not the case where the final destination is a large receiver, but even then there are still significant transportation impacts in most cases. I hate the fact that when I read the part about sulfur dioxide I’m like, well, that’s good at least lol. There’s some evidence that cleaning up ship emissions might be a significant contributor to recent sea temperature acceleration, since the cloud seeding effect from ocean shipping has been drastically reduced.

by hedora 3y ago

bmitc 3y ago

> environmental impact of shipping electronics from China (or between any two points on earth near a major harbor) on a cargo vessel is zero How does that work? Or are you just referring to electronic components only and it being zero relatively speaking?

NhanH 3y ago
Modern container cargo ships are huge. Even though in aggregate the absolute pollution is a big numbers, when you amortize over the volume, shipping an item has about a very close to zero impact on environment. And this is not some hand-waving explanation either, since other factors dominates the environmental impact (for example, shipping from Newegg to your office is probably a magnitude more polluted), it doesn't matter if the factory is in China or the US. This applies to a lot more things, even lower value stuffs like fruit. Which is why local produce might have more environmental impact than imported mass produce fruits, though I don't have a citation for this on hand.
- TJSomething 3y ago
  I would add that the numbers are possible to compare, but container shipping is pretty efficient. One container from Shenzhen to Oakland (~10,000 km) is going to be the CO₂ equivalent of burning 60 gallons of gasoline.
- diydsp 3y ago
  "According to Irene Blooming, a spokeswoman for the European environmental coalition Seas at Risk, the fuel used in oil tankers and container ships is high in sulfur and cheaper to buy compared to the fuel used for domestic land use. "A ship lets out around 50 times more sulfur than a lorry per tonne of cargo carried."[1] "Of total global air emissions, marine shipping accounts for 18 to 30 percent of the nitrogen oxides and 9% of the sulfur oxides."[1] "One source of environmental stresses on maritime vessels recently has come from states and localities, as they assess the contribution of commercial marine vessels to regional air quality problems when ships are docked at port.[33] For instance, large marine diesel engines are believed to contribute 7 percent of mobile source nitrogen oxide emissions in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana. Ships can also have a significant impact in areas without large commercial ports: they contribute about 37 percent of total area nitrogen oxide emissions in the Santa Barbara, California area, and that percentage is expected to increase to 61 percent by 2015."[1] " Maritime transport accounts for 3.5% to 4% of all greenhouse gas emissions, primarily carbon dioxide.[1][27] According to the World Bank, in 2022, the shipping industry's 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions make it "the sixth largest greenhouse gas emitter worldwide, ranking between Japan and Germany."[1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_shipping https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_shi...
  - K0balt 3y ago
    While this is true, if you were to calculate the last-mile carbon cost it would be much, much higher. A full container of goods costs about 60 gallons of diesel to ship across the world. That same container costs 60 gallons to move 360 miles from a port. Delivery vehicles drive approximately 0.8 miles per package delivered, and get around 10-20mpg delivering, so each package costs 1/10 to 1/20 of a gallon of fuel to deliver from the depot to your door. Assuming there are 4000 eventual packages in a container, the last mile delivery for the container is 200-400 gallons. Obviously this is not the case where the final destination is a large receiver, but even then there are still significant transportation impacts in most cases. I hate the fact that when I read the part about sulfur dioxide I’m like, well, that’s good at least lol. There’s some evidence that cleaning up ship emissions might be a significant contributor to recent sea temperature acceleration, since the cloud seeding effect from ocean shipping has been drastically reduced.