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."
Who shops online for environmental reasons?
The moral of the story? Save the planet. Kill yourself.
The article talked a lot about transportation costs. Were they just comparing transportation costs? What about the environmental impact of keeping the A/C running and lights going all day in the store?
Very very short on details.
So hundreds of people can be served by 1 computer (no need for sales people, which would require many to drive to/from the store), at home (they don't have to travel themselves), using the power they have on at home anyways (no need for store power), and this is somehow more than the store? I understand the actual product has shipping pollution, but I mean come on, that can't make up for everything else.
I'm confused.
The postwoman is already driving past my house every day. It takes no extra gasoline for her to carry that latest Amazon book or Electronic Boutique game with her.
Plus the freight trucks that move this crap across the country burn far less gas than if we all drove to the store. ~10,000 boxes carried in one truck is more efficient than 10,000 car trips.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The last sentence says "But one technology site notes the study was conducted in Britain, which could have an impact on its conclusions.", which makes it sound as though conducting studies in Britain, rather than elsewhere, is much more likely to skew results somehow, but the actual article on said technology site merely points out that the results obtained are the results you get with the conditions one finds in Britain, and that conducting the study in other countries with differing transportation systems, population densities, topographical and climatological features, et cetera, might produce differing results.
As for shopping locally or online, I go where I can find what I want (or, more likely, what I'm willing to settle for) at a price I can stomach and obtain this most quickly and conveniently. Sometimes that's local, sometimes not. Usually it's neither and I have to make do without.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
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.
Last time I was in London (some years now), I was appalled at the traffic, and the disorganized nature of the city's layout
Well, we tried burning it down in 1666, but that didn't quite work. Paris did a better job, but they had Napoleon.
Its not the end purchaser who realizes some environmental benefits, its the shipper.
Its not about Joe Schmoe's environmental impact, its about Amazon and UPS and Fed Ex and USPS combined carbon footprint versus the environmental impact of all the Joe Schmoes out there.
This was bogus science starting from a false premise.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
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.
What if I'm buying CO2 credits online?
#DeleteChrome
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.
Paris also had to do with helping the police/military crack down on revolutionists. The thing is the locals were perfectly happy with the maze, they just knew their way around. The police trying to track down those revolutionaries not: they got lost, and were an easy target. That's why there was this redesign, and nowadays Paris has these huge boulevards.
Many European cities to this day are like that, a bit like a maze, mainly because they grew organically, without any central planning. Newly built neighbourhoods nowadays are also often built with bending roads, not so straight. Because it looks nicer, and it slows down cars (for safety).
An other big think about street 'planning' in older european cities is that they grew with constraints: the population had to fit within the city walls for protection. As the population grew, more walls would be built further out. Usually the gates from the new walls would not align with the previous one to help break the flow of an invading army. So what seem as a wtf planning nowadays was actually tactical warfare at the time.
Grand parent is correct that the large pathways in Paris date from Napoleon. At this time, medieval tactics and city walls were obsolete so being able to send troops quickly to quell a rebelion was much more important than to plan for a siege.
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.
Amsterdam's layout is the result of two things: trade and the swamp. We didn't need city walls because armies couldn't cross the swamp anyway. But we needed lots of canals to ferry goods between warehouses and the sea port, and then more canals and even more, moving the port around a couple of times, and all of this around the curvy Amstel river and in the middle of a swamp where some parts need more drainage than others. Later parts of the city follow the lines of roads that went through the swamp.
There's just no way you're ever going to get anything gridlike out of a situation like that. We only have grid structures in the very newest parts of the city, and more gridlike they are, the more boring they are. Irregularity is fun.