Comments on: PlanetThreads

By: Connie

Connie — Thu, 14 May 2009 18:01:17 +0000

Interesting point, green LA girl. I believe we mention that the positive environmental impact of e-shopping is due to not driving, but we didn’t explore the benefits of biking or walking instead.

Have you looked into the energy and resources needed to power a brick-and-mortar store and whether or not there are any benefits to moving all of the operations online?

By: E-tail vs. retail: Which is greener? | green LA girl

E-tail vs. retail: Which is greener? | green LA girl — Thu, 14 May 2009 17:43:44 +0000

[...] which got Traveling the Green Way to announce that Online Shopping More Eco-Friendly. Connie Wu at Your Daily Thread took that title at face value, citing that post to declare that Online shopping is more [...]

By: green LA girl

green LA girl — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:37:47 +0000

I left a similar comment on the Traveling the Green Way post you cite, but I thought I’d make a similar point here. It seems you cited The TtGW post without actually looking into the study that TtGW was citing to make sure the TtGW’s conclusion was actually correct.

For one, the study got some of its money from Buy.com — an e-retailer (GreenSpace says “buy.com, as a member of the university’s Green Design Institute, donated money to a broad research fund, but did not fund this study per se”). That fact biases the study a bit, since the study decides to compare e-shopping to “someone who drives 7.5 miles to a store in a car that gets 22.5 miles per gallon and picks up one or two items.”

If I bike over to my local REI to pick up a few things, the CO2 emission results would be quite different — and I’d be contributing to a walkable, bikable local economy too.

I think it’s important to mention the limitations of the study when you talk about it, instead of extrapolating to make a blanket statement that online shopping’s more eco than retail.