Trans Scan: a global scan of emerging trends in mobility and the built environment

Impacts of online shopping

At first glance Internet shopping would seem environmentally friendly but Britain’s Society of Motor Manufactures and Traders (SMMT) has started to question any such assumption. It believes distributing the goods purchased online is producing more CO₂ emissions than was ever anticipated—at least in Britain’s experience.

According to SMMT all that online shopping has really done is fuelled the use of small delivery vans when in practice cars are more efficient.

Although the raw figures are a little misleading, what they show is that reductions in CO₂ emissions from cars is being more than offset by the additional CO₂ now being pumped into the air by delivery vans. (Between 1997 and 2005 car emissions fell by 2.3 million tonnes in the UK while CO₂ from vans rose by 3.3 million tonnes.)

Part of the car reduction can be explained by the fact that new cars coming onto the road produce far less CO₂ than previous models. At the same time vans are not subject to such strict emission controls as cars, therefore any van is likely to produce more CO₂. Nonetheless the number of vans on UK roads has risen by a third in the last ten years and the distance they are traveling is growing four times faster than the distance traveled by cars.

Much of the extra business for vans can be explain by online shopping. British households are now spending about $7 billion a month on Internet goods.

The scan also showed:

Ozone concerns

Much of the scientific and political debate on global warming centres on the need to reduce outputs of CO₂. But CO₂ is not the only emission that rates as a greenhouse gas. According to an editorial in New Scientist, it is all too easy to forget about other pollutants whose contribution to global warming is just as worrying. One is the brown haze that hangs over much of Asia. The other is ozone. The trouble is that the real effects of ozone may have been “drastically underestimated”.

The journal quotes new UK research that shows ozone smog attacks plants—damaging their ability to absorb CO₂. With plants responsible for absorbing a quarter of all the CO₂ we emit, ozone levels could become increasingly worrying. Ozone levels have long been a sporadic problem in Perth. In fact all initiatives to reduce car use in the city are in part designed to reduce ground level ozone. With temperatures in the city expected to increase, ozone reduction initiatives could become an even greater priority.