Englisch · 2021 · B Text for text based tasks

How online shopping is changing the world

1 Not long ago, only a handful of items would show up at our doors —

2 a newspaper, a pizza, or maybe some Chinese takeout. Today, an

3 enormous range of goods can be ordered online: DVDs, video games,

4 oranges from Spain, clothing, books, groceries, even medicine.

5 Something even more unusual is buying live insects to feed a pet

6 tarantula. Or perhaps you need assistance with a task at home? You

7 can now hire a plumber or a carpenter online. This new style of

8 buying and selling is called e-commerce, or e-business.

9 Most deliveries to our homes are still the familiar brown cardboard

10 boxes from companies such as Amazon, which accounts for roughly half

11 of all US package deliveries every year. Amazon never wanted

12 customers to have to think about shipping — neither its cost nor

13 how long it would take. "Time is money. Save both," the company's

14 slogan states, showing that Amazon's central aim is to get products

15 to customers as fast as possible. Because Amazon focuses so heavily

16 on speed, other retailers have felt pressured to hurry too, and

17 shoppers have come to feel that anything that can't be delivered

18 quickly isn't worth buying. In 2005, Amazon launched Prime, a club

19 in which members pay an annual fee and, in return, get free two-day

20 shipping on everything they have bought. Prime currently has more

21 than 100 million members, and a research company discovered that 93

22 per cent of subscribers renew after one year, with 98 per cent

23 still on board after two. "Not for patient people" is another Prime

24 slogan — and it's accurate: about one in three members has removed

25 items from their online basket upon finding out delivery would take

26 longer than two days. Since then, Amazon has halved its Prime

27 shipping time again, down to just one day. Considerable thought

28 has gone into questions like the best way to pack a box, how to

29 avoid traffic jams, and what happens when a delivery driver rings

30 the bell and finds nobody home. The cardboard box has become the

31 clearest symbol of e-commerce, representing the conflict between

32 our seemingly endless appetite for consumption and the wellbeing

33 of the planet. A heavier box, for instance, costs more to produce

34 and burns more fuel to transport. Like other companies, Amazon has

35 been working to create packaging that is both lightweight and

36 strong. Even so, many companies continue to use excessive amounts

37 of packaging material. Yet the paper and plastic used in packaging

38 make up only part of online retailers' total carbon footprint. Vans

39 and trucks operated by companies like FedEx, UPS, and DHL also add

40 to traffic congestion. The real skill of online retail lies in

41 encouraging us to buy without stopping to think too much. As a

42 result, some customers order far more than they actually need, send

43 unwanted goods back, and then order replacements, which means

44 drivers have to make repeat trips. Others live in such remote rural

45 areas that delivery drivers have to go out of their way just to

46 locate them. Cities in particular struggle with home deliveries,

47 since they were never built to cope with this volume of traffic.

48 Delivery vehicles double-park to load and unload, streets become

49 congested, and citizens end up breathing polluted air.

50 How will e-commerce tackle these challenges over the next ten years?

51 Several different solutions are being considered, including drones,

52 parachute deliveries, self-driving vehicles, and robots. Clearly,

53 there is still a long way to go before e-commerce becomes both more

54 efficient and more environmentally friendly.