No calling out here, I get it. We all like goods to instantly arrive at our door. Sometimes we even find products not found anywhere else that we desperately want. In my case, it’s bulk peanuts.
I love making my own peanut butter.
It’s pretty tasty.
However, whenever something’s shipped to us at Amazon, we’re harming ourselves and others.
What do you mean me buying a new phone case will kill us all?
You’re crazy!
That may be true, but I think it’s unrelated. Humor me for a second. Read this list here and make your own conclusions and decisions.
- Amazon’s main business includes cloud services. Cloud services are not ethereal. They run on thousands of supercomputers. Data centers account for 2% of global CO2 emissions, which makes everyone’s lives harder.
- Shipping stuff that’s not in your area requires boats or planes. Those are pretty bad for the air we breathe, and the water we drink. The aviation industry alone contributes 2% of global CO2 emissions.
- On top of that, Prime purchases greatly increase the traffic and circulation of transportation required to get your new Fitbit in 1–2 days.
- Amazon comitting to climate change isn’t enough. Aleviating the harm is not solving the problem. It’s okay, but it’s not enough.
I’m not sure if any of us will be knocking on Jeff Bezo’s door soon to nag to him about how using renewable energy for 40% is enough.
It ain’t gonna cut it, chief.
What we can do is be mindful about what and how much do we consume, and the steps that take your soon-to be peanut butter matierals to your home.
Here’s some things you can start doing:
- Get in the buy/support local trend. It still has some environmentally concerning steps, but they’re less and at a smaller scale most of the time. It also helps local business, which is always great.
- Opt-in for less instant/express deliveries. This allows the delivery logistics to perform batch deliveries as opposed to those of Prime deliveries.
- Buy online directly from your favorite stores. Whether it’s headphones, a t-shirt or organic maple syrup — almost everyone has their own online shop these days. Their shipping options are pretty reasonable too!
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some environentally-aware peanut butter to make.
