Grocery Delivery Lowers Carbon Dioxide Emissions Over Individual Trips

vinces99 writes "Those trips to the store can take a chunk out of your day and put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But now University of Washington engineers have found that using a grocery delivery service can cut carbon dioxide emissions by at least half when compared with individual household trips to the store. Trucks filled to capacity that deliver to customers clustered in neighborhoods produced the most savings in carbon dioxide emissions, but there are even benefits with delivery to rural areas."

Comments

Only true for a small portion of the world

[prefec2]

When I go to the grocery, I walk there. I doubt that any delivery service can be more efficient. However, to be able to shop in that way, the supermarket must be not more than 10-20 min away from home (by foot or by bike).

 

Re:Only true for a small portion of the world

[goodmanj]

Some stores offer delivery after you pay at the register

Worst of both worlds, energy-wise: you burn gas driving to the store and back, and then the store's truck burns gas to deliver to you. This isn't having your cake and eating it too: this is having your cake and then throwing it away and getting another cake.

Re:Only true for a small portion of the world

[hazem]

It really comes down to how our communities are designed. The US has worked really hard to build communities that are difficult to live your life without a car. As an example, the nearest grocery to me is 4 miles away, the nearest clothes cleaner is 2 miles in the other direction. The nearest gas station, however is only .75 miles.

As a contrast, I spent a couple months in a smaller town in Holland. I walked to work (2 miles) and all the grocery stores (and other stores too) were on the way and a short work from my hotel. I generally stopped every few days to pick up whatever I needed (note, the fridge was small... like dorm fridges in the US, as were fridges as friends' houses). If I'd had a bike it would have been an even easier time. But they just set things up in their communities so that it's easier to do day-by-day shopping and harder to buy an SUV full of perishiables to fill a giant fridge.

I now bike-commute here back in the US, and while it's definitely not as convenient as driving but it's been good for my health and I find I buy a lot less stuff that ends up being thrown out anyway.

Sure, I missed having grocery stores open at 3:00am, but if I'm given the chance, I'd definitely go back for a longer stint. It's a more relaxing lifestyle, even while I still worked hard.

Re:Only true for a small portion of the world

[xelah]

Not if the reason you're doing it is because you don't own a car, and yet live within walking distance.

Re:Only true for a small portion of the world

[goodmanj]

What is this "European" system of which you speak?

He started it. The Polish author I'm replying to described how things worked "outside the US". That seemed pretty broad to me, so I narrowed it down to just Europe, based on my personal experience seeing corner shops in the UK, France, Switzerland, Italy, and Austria.

I'm the first to admit that some Americans generalize too broadly about the rest of the world, but this conversation started off with a Polish guy implying that corner shops are used worldwide, followed by a Briton (I checked) saying that because I'm American I'm clueless about European multiculturalism -- and *I'm* the one being called out for hasty generalization?

Re:Particular diet.

[niftydude]

Will this grocery delivery service discriminate against "atheist" foods?

All foods are atheist. At least, I've never met or heard of any food that claimed that it believed in a god.

Feel free to provide evidence that theist foods exist - after all - extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

so I can't choose my own food?

[r00t]

I want the milk that is newest, the meat without marbling, the pear without bruises, and the beets without rotting leaves.

I'm sure it benefits the store to provide me whatever is oldest and/or least desired. If I don't buy more food to compensate, throwing out half of it, there may even be an environmental benefit. (less food waste if people eat the moldy food) No thanks. I want the good stuff.

Re:so I can't choose my own food?

[goodmanj]

In my experience, the grocery delivery services know that you're going to be super-suspicious about low-quality food, and make a point of giving you the best stuff. They advertise this heavily, and from what I've seen it's true. (Their financial incentive to give you crap food is smaller than their financial incentive to operate fewer expensive retail stores.)

Also, keep in mind that if they're delivering from a central warehouse rather than a retail location, the food won't have been sitting out shriveling on a display shelf for three days before you buy it.

Re:Particular diet.

[prionic6]

All foods are atheist. At least, I've never met or heard of any food that claimed that it believed in a god.

Depends on your definition of "food".

Re:Really?

[immaterial]

They make no mention of public transportation because that would point a finger at one of the many gaping holes in their premise. Constraining your problem areas to a very tiny subset does not make your research any more valid...

Hahahahahahaha hahaha.... Hahahaha... Wait a second while I peel myself off the floor here. Heh... Okay, what was that you were saying about private transportation being a tiny "very tiny subset" of people's transport usage? Also, the equation you gave your third-grader is wrong; you need separate variables for distance1 and distance2, and at that point the equation is not solvable until you do some research to determine what those distances would be in various real-world situations. Like, say, the research described in TFA.

WebVan, Safeway, substitution, and allergens

[tlambert]

Congratulations, now go make^H^H^H^Hlose a billion $$$!

Safeway is starting to offer this as a service; however, like WebVan, they reserve the right to substitute "equivalent" goods when they feel it's necessary.

When WebVan did that, we ended up with something with peanut oil in it instead of canola oil, which it's lucky we caught, or someone could have died.

When Safeway does it, it's going to be replacing name brands with Safeway brands, and it is more or less *always* be necessary, since they are sending the vans from the distribution center, which only stocks a few name brands. Toilet tissue? You get Safeway. Kleenex? You get Safeway tissue.

The asinine thing is that Safeway *already* does not use the frequency marketing card data to datamine it and say to themselves "Hmmmm... this card never buys anything containing peanuts, and hasn't for 10 years; let's flag them so that if they accidentally get something that has peanuts in it, they get an 'are you sure?' at the checkout". This despite the databases they already have on product ingredients and everything the card has *ever* been used to buy make this type of mining *trivial*.

Instead, the assholes print out $0.50 off coupons for exactly the products that we've been avoiding for 10 years, every time we buy an "equivalent" non-store brand version of the item. Of course it's cleverly based on the fact that on our next trip we are likely to be picking up one of the "equivalent" products that don't contain what amounts to rat poison, or might as well, for the allergic person.

Seriously, this is a stupid idea.

Re:Particular diet.

[sonamchauhan]

Hannibal... is that you?