Want to save the earth? Drop the online shopping and drive to the store, apparently.
A study released this week suggests that working from home and shopping online do nothing to decrease pollution and in fact may increase it.
As an Amazon-holic and frequent couch-based worker, I’m a little disappointed to hear this news. I’m not sure how many physical trips I replace by shopping online, but I doubt it averages anywhere near 3.5. I’ve never ordered 25 items at once. And I wouldn’t drive or bike more than 50 kilometers to buy anything.
I don’t shop online or work from home to decrease pollution. I do those things because I’m lazy, and they’re easy. And, sure, I develop maybe a little incidental environmentalist smugness about it, but mostly convenience draws me in.
Still, even if helping the earth hasn’t been my driving motivation, I assumed I at least wasn’t hurting anything. Didn’t you?
Despite believing myself to be a lefty environmentalist-type (I ride my bicycle everywhere, compost my banana peels, and try, with varying degrees of success to take short showers), this news is probably not going to change my behavior—or, most likely, anyone’s. Those of us who shop online regularly are probably not going to hop in our cars and drive across town to a bookstore instead of hopping onto Amazon.com. We’re not going to go into the office when we could be working on the couch, in our jammies. Well, maybe to feel a book in our hands, or to impress our bosses, but not to save the earth.
Will this study change your behavior with regards to shopping online and working from home?
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