Order online or drive to the store? The climate savvy pick ‘clicks and bricks’

An Instacart shopper arriving at a customer's home with his delivery of groceries in San Francisco, California. The hybrid brick-and-mortar-e-commerce method, called 'bricks and clicks', is less polluting than traditional shopping, which itself is usually cleaner than parcel-shipping from an online retailer warehouse, the researchers found. — Bay Area News Group/TNS

Consumers could be forgiven for assuming that shopping online has a lower carbon footprint than buying in-store. For many, the online option saves them a trip in the car, and it stands to reason that logistics companies would be good at generating efficient delivery routes. There’s some evidence to back up the notion.

But new research published in Environmental Science And Technology focused on UK shoppers not only suggests the reverse, but concludes that there’s a third, even cleaner option.