Ecommerce has a much smaller impact on the environment compared to physical retail stores, resulting in between 1.5 and 2.9 times lower greenhouse gas emissions.
According to a new independent report commissioned by Amazon and published by Oliver Wyman and LAE, ecommerce in Europe has a lower environmental impact than physical non-food retail on average.
In the “nominal case”, defined as the “most common situation”, driving to a physical store emits between three and six times more CO2e than ordering a non-food product online.
Driving to a store, buying one product and returning home emits around 4100g of CO2e, while ordering online emits around 900g, the research stated.
