Though shopping online is convenient, online corporations including Amazon damage the environment and significantly hurt small businesses.

It may seem like packages just magically appear at your door, but online shopping requires in-person delivery to individual residences.

Urban last-mile delivery, which is the last part in the delivery process, is expected to grow by 78% by 2030, according to a
Jan. 10 World Economic Forum article. This will add to traffic congestion and increase carbon emissions by 30%.

“Rising congestion and emissions from e-commerce delivery are already putting stress on city traffic patterns,” said Christoph Wolff, head of mobility at World Economic Forum.  

He stressed the rise in demand will only put more pressure on cities that are already ill-equipped for increased traffic of delivery trucks, cars and planes.

Until the growing impact on global warming from e-commerce is solved, brick and mortar stores are the more environmentally friendly option.

Extremely high rates of returned items is another reason why online shopping should be avoided.

With the lack of in-person changing rooms, many shoppers buy clothes from online stores and return them if they don’t fit. This leads to more discarded plastic and further contributes to greenhouse gas emissions.

Amazon’s policy for allowing returns at high rates increases harmful emissions, especially during flash sale events such as Black Friday, according to a Jan. 27, 2020 Business Wire article.

A Jan. 23, 2020 article in the journal “Research and Markets” showed more than a third of online shoppers returned a purchased item within the three month research period.

The environmental repercussions of returns involves double the transportation and requires disposal rather than reselling an item in good condition.

Annual sales including Singles’ Day, a shopping holiday to celebrate being single, Black Friday and Cyber Monday all place a burden on the environment.

The incredible amount of packaging, the shipping, delivering products in a short time and the disposal of old products all wreak havoc on Earth.

Online shopping also negatively affects small businesses.

Retail stores have seen record-high closure rates during the pandemic, while e-commerce websites including Amazon have seen profit booms over the past year.

According to marketing research company, CoStar Group, 12,200 stores plan to close because of revenue loss caused by the pandemic.

We should not allow our mom-and-pop family businesses to be shut down because of large companies like Amazon taking advantage of the economy.

The plummet of brick-and-mortar stores is in stark contrast with the rise of online retailers, which have seen a 6-10% increase of all products over the past year, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

“The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift towards a more digital world,” said Mukhisa Kituyi, UNCTAD secretary-general. “The changes we make now will have lasting effects as the world economy begins to recover.”

While my colleague points out emissions have improved during the pandemic, the dramatic drop was caused by a decrease in commuter transportation because of lockdowns and isn’t related to online shopping, according to a Jan. 15 Nature article.

The United States contributed the most to the global dip, with a nearly 13% decrease in its emissions, due mostly to a sharp decline in vehicle transportation . . . and continued as the pandemic escalated at the end of the year,” according to the article citing research from the Journal of Nature Communications.

Accessibility does not always mean improvement.

Online shopping is just another way for big corporations to continue filling their top executive’s pockets while taking away cash from in-person businesses that were already struggling before the pandemic.