E-commerce 'best for the environment'
E-commerce
18 March 2009
E-commerce offers a more eco-friendly way of shopping that physically visiting a high street shop, new research has suggested.
The study by the Logistics Research Centre at Heriot-Watt University saw researchers look at the carbon cost of delivering items ordered from a website and compare this with the carbon footprint of using a car or bus to travel to the shops.
Delivering an item by van was found to produce 181g of carbon dioxide, while travelling to the shops by car emitted 4,274g and journeying by bus cost 1,265g of carbon dioxide.
James Roper, chief executive of IMRG, said: "It has long been assumed that the overall efficiency improvements inherent in e-retailing make it more planet-friendly than going out to the shops, but this factual, wide-ranging research nails the point."
Recent statistics from the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index showed that UK e-commerce sales surged by 13 per cent in February year-on-year, with the electricals segment experiencing the highest growth.
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