3. 朗读-网购时代：“快递垃圾”何去何从

3. Delivery disaster: the hidden environmental cost of your online shopping

卫报

We love ordering goods and foodat a click – but this creates mountains of packaging waste and millions oftransport miles. You may give a fleeting thought to the environmental impact when you are drowning in excess packaging, but it’s easy to ignore the rest ofit. Such as the fact that Amazon, in figures released last year, emits nearly as much carbon dioxide as a small country.

In an ideal world, online shopping could be a better option than making individual trips to the store. We do not live in an ideal world, however, but one in which profit and consumerism are rampant. We don’t behave – and online retailers don’t encourage us to behave – in a sensible way, says researcher Julian Allen.

Once, we were prepared to wait,but now we want same-day delivery. That, says Allen, “tends to mean stuff getsmoved in smaller and smaller quantities. We have vehicles shooting all over theplace making single deliveries. We have the concept of ‘free’ delivery, which is a selling point for retailers, but it’s not really free in the sense of what it costs them and what it costs in environmental terms.”

People also buy things,particularly clothes, with the intention of returning much of the order,resulting in more carriage and mileage. “They are not being penalised financially for doing that,” says Allen. The growth in hot-food delivery services, such as Deliveroo and Uber Eats, has been enormous. Allen says, “Bicycles would help in terms of pollution, but the trend has been to move away from bikes as these firms expand their networks, and it’s not viable.”

So what should we do? “Shoplocally, especially if you can use sustainable transport,” is Anderson’sadvice. And Allen thinks we should be more patient and consolidate orders into one delivery at a time. “Rather than having them delivered to your home, chooseto pick them up at a nearby collection point. Couriers can bring a lot of stuff to one place.”