The head of Toys R Us, a retailer battling online rivals, has warned that ecommerce can cause environmental harm that consumers have not yet recognised.
?It?s very ungreen,? Jerry Storch, Toys R Us chief executive, told the Financial Times ahead of the holiday shopping season, whose traditional high point in the US after Thanksgiving this week has already been pre-empted by a rush of offers online.
?[People are] just so enraptured with how cool it is that they can order anything and get it brought to their home that they aren?t thinking about the carbon footprint of that,? he added. ?But I do think that that will change.?
The convenience of ecommerce and its threat to bricks-and-mortar stores have been well documented since Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994, but questions about its environmental impact have got less public attention.
On its website Amazon says: ?The efficiencies of online shopping result in a greener shopping experience than traditional retailing.?
Academic studies have not reached such a definitive conclusion.
Jason Mathers, a senior manager at the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group, said: ?The details matter. There is not a simple answer. There are certain advantages that the ecommerce system could have, but doesn?t necessarily have.?
The energy use and carbon emissions of home delivery compared with store shopping depend on several factors: the vehicles used, distance travelled, number of products bought, failed deliveries, and returned goods.
Mr Storch said: ?Driving a truck down a country lane in rural Connecticut to deliver a package is hardly the greenest way of product delivery to occur.?
?I don?t mean to slam anyone,? he added, noting that Toys R Us sold $1bn of goods over the internet last year ? 7 per cent of total sales ? and that many were delivered to people?s homes.
?That?s what customers want.? But he said: ?People are going to start realising, wait, I?m already ? taking my children to school. The store is right there. I can just pick it up.?
A 2009 study from Heriot Watt university said: ?While neither home delivery nor conventional shopping has an absolute CO2 advantage, on average, the home delivery operation is likely to generate less CO2 than the typical shopping trip.?
In the same year a study at Carnegie Mellon university found that buying a flash drive from Buy.com cut energy use and CO2 emissions by 35 per cent compared with traditional shopping.
Timothy Kenyon, director of GfK?s Green Gauge survey, said a small segment of consumers ? often affluent, educated women ? were willing to alter their behaviour based on environmental concerns.
Another small segment would never do so, while a large group in the middle could be persuaded by practical arguments.
?If you can link green messages to something pragmatic like ?It?s going to save you money?, then on a mass scale you might see more pick-up,? he said.
With advances in smartphones, store IT systems and logistics, Mr Storch said customers had many more ways of getting a product than simply buying it at their local store or getting an online order sent to home from a warehouse.
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