Slashdot Mirror
Online Shopping May Actually Increase Pollution
destinyland writes "British researchers have reached a startling conclusion. Unless online shoppers order 25 items at a time, they're polluting more than if they shopped at their local mall. An environmental benefit only occurs 'if online shopping replaces 3.5 traditional shopping trips, or if 25 orders are delivered at the same time, or, if the distance traveled to where the purchase is made is more than 50 kilometers. Shopping online does not offer net environmental benefits unless these criteria are met.' The study was conducted by Newcastle University's Institution of Engineering and Technology, which blames the environmental impact of transportation, warning that 'policy makers must do their homework to ensure that rebound effects do not negate the positive benefits of their policy initiatives.' But one technology site notes the study was conducted in Britain, which could have an impact on its conclusions."
That's mainly because parts of London were laid out prior to the horse & cart, and the vast majority pre-automobile.
Lay out a 'modern' city in grid-form, and you get... Ugh... Milton Keynes.
Yeah, I get why... I'm just saying, gee, that might affect an analysis of how efficient home delivery vs. local shopping might be.
Not always. Look at Manhattan... nominally laid out in a grid, yet down in Greenwich Village, there's at least one street that actually crosses itself, I don't remember which one anymore. I think city designers might do a lot of drugs. Or simply delight in confusing people.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The oldest sections of Manhattan (at the south end) are laid out hodgepodge because there was really no planning there. Horse and carts didn't guarantee logically laid out streets. More likely they were laid out by what land was least muddy in the rain or some other parameter that old cities seemed to use. e.g. some wide boulevards in some cities are wide because when it would rain and the cart track got too muddy they would travel beside it until it too got too muddy, and then they would make a new path beside it... and so on... until the first track finally returned to a state that it can be driven on. Buildings would be built far enough apart to allow this and then paved over into wide boulevards when cars came. No better reason than that. Ad hoc planning. South Manhattan was like that. Then they hired some surveyor (can't remember his name) and he laid out a grid pattern over all the remaining unurbanized (farms etc.) land; on which any expansion of the city would be built on. It just happened that the city was built at the cross over time between WTF urban planning and some sort of rational planning.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Most old cities of Europe were laid for city walls. City walls being expensive and hard to expand, the cities were laid out in circular pattern with central market and roads rexpanding radially, street circles connecting them and more radial streets added as the roads were getting further apart. If more towns were near to each other, where they met while expanding the layout was very chaotic, two unequally growing radial patterns meeting. Also, squeezing as much as possible within city walls, with chaotic land purchase/inheritance patterns often led to very chaotic city center layout... see Prague.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
If efficiency is your goal, you should do it the Foxconn way.
Basically you live, work and eat in the factory-city (some even die there ;) ). The factory-city even has its own chicken farm producing eggs for the factory cafeterias: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_38/b4195058423479_page_3.htm
No need to waste time, space and resources to have the workers go shopping for different stuff, cook their own meals and storing surpluses in their own refrigerators and stores.
Instead of:
farms -> hypermarkets -> shopping commutes -> fridge/store -> kitchen -> consumption point
You have:
farms -> cafeteria fridge/store -> cafeteria kitchen -> consumption point
When done right, this way will be less polluting than the "western suburban method". It may not make for a better lifestyle, but if efficiency is the goal, this is what you do.
FWIW, if you live in a city (normal not factory) that's suitable for pedestrians it might actually not be so inefficient to eat out assuming you go to restaurants that are similar in efficiencies as hypermarkets.
farms -> restaurant fridge/store -> restaurant kitchen -> consumption point.