Englisch · 2021 · Text Based Tasks

How online shopping is changing the world

Not long ago, only a handful of items would show up at our doors -
a newspaper, a pizza, or maybe some Chinese takeout. Today, an
enormous range of goods can be ordered online: DVDs, video games,
oranges from Spain, clothing, books, groceries, even medicine.
Something even more unusual is buying live insects to feed a pet
tarantula. Or perhaps you need assistance with a task at home? You
can now hire a plumber or a carpenter online. This new style of
buying and selling is called e-commerce, or e-business.

Most deliveries to our homes are still the familiar brown cardboard
boxes from companies such as Amazon, which accounts for roughly half
of all US package deliveries every year. Amazon never wanted
customers to have to think about shipping - neither its cost nor
how long it would take. "Time is money. Save both," the company's
slogan states, showing that Amazon's central aim is to get products
to customers as fast as possible. Because Amazon focuses so heavily
on speed, other retailers have felt pressured to hurry too, and
shoppers have come to feel that anything that can't be delivered
quickly isn't worth buying. In 2005, Amazon launched Prime, a club
in which members pay an annual fee and, in return, get free two-day
shipping on everything they have bought. Prime currently has more
than 100 million members, and a research company discovered that 93
per cent of subscribers renew after one year, with 98 per cent
still on board after two. "Not for patient people" is another Prime
slogan - and it's accurate: about one in three members has removed

items from their online basket upon finding out delivery would take
longer than two days. Since then, Amazon has halved its Prime
shipping time again, down to just one day. Considerable thought
has gone into questions like the best way to pack a box, how to
avoid traffic jams, and what happens when a delivery driver rings
the bell and finds nobody home. The cardboard box has become the
clearest symbol of e-commerce, representing the conflict between
our seemingly endless appetite for consumption and the wellbeing

of the planet. A heavier box, for instance, costs more to produce
and burns more fuel to transport. Like other companies, Amazon has
been working to create packaging that is both lightweight and
strong. Even so, many companies continue to use excessive amounts
of packaging material. Yet the paper and plastic used in packaging
make up only part of online retailers' total carbon footprint. Vans
and trucks operated by companies like FedEx, UPS, and DHL also add
to traffic congestion. The real skill of online retail lies in
encouraging us to buy without stopping to think too much. As a
result, some customers order far more than they actually need, send
unwanted goods back, and then order replacements, which means

drivers have to make repeat trips. Others live in such remote rural
areas that delivery drivers have to go out of their way just to
locate them. Cities in particular struggle with home deliveries,
since they were never built to cope with this volume of traffic.
Delivery vehicles double-park to load and unload, streets become
congested, and citizens end up breathing polluted air.

How will e-commerce tackle these challenges over the next ten years?
Several different solutions are being considered, including drones,
parachute deliveries, self-driving vehicles, and robots. Clearly,
there is still a long way to go before e-commerce becomes both more
efficient and more environmentally friendly.

Adapted from: Samanth Subramanian: How our home delivery habit reshaped the world, The Guardian, 21. 11. 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/21/how-our-home-delivery-habit-reshaped-the-world