Is online shopping bad for the planet?

The convenience of online shopping is hard to beat. But it uses a lot of energy and resources and can lead to more waste. — Naomi Anderson-Subryan/The New York Times

The convenience of online shopping is hard to beat. But it uses a lot of energy and resources and can lead to more waste.

Transportation needed for online shopping spews greenhouse emissions. Three billion trees are cut down every year to produce packaging for all kinds of things, ecommerce included, according to some estimates. The data centres needed to store and retrieve orders consume about 10 times the amount of energy of a typical home and gulp precious groundwater for cooling.