Abstract
Electronic shopping is getting more and more popular, and it is not only clothes and electronics that people buy online, but groceries and household products too. Based on real-life data from a major cosmetics and household products retailer in the Czech Republic, this study set to assess the life cycle environmental impact of parcel delivery. Two archetype parcels containing common household and hygiene products were designed and packed in two distinct ways, and the environmental impact was quantified using the Life Cycle Assessment method. It showed that it is environmentally beneficial to use plastic cushions to insulate the goods instead of paper. However, the most important process contributing to the environmental burden was found to be electricity consumption in the logistics center. Hence, the importance of energy efficiency and efficient space utilization was demonstrated on alternative scenarios. Since the cardboard box the goods are packed in turned out to be another important contributor, an alternative scenario was designed where a reusable plastic crate was used instead. Even though the scenario was based on several simplistic assumptions, it showed a clear potential to be environmentally beneficial. In the study, contribution of other processes was scrutinized, as well as sensitivity to variation of parameters, e.g. transportation distances. The main scientific contribution of this work is to show the importance of logistics and distribution of products to end customers in the rapidly developing field of electronic retail of household products.
Highlights
The electronic retail is getting an ever bigger market share
It was found that the additional packaging of products in electronic retail of household products represents an additional environmental burden
It has been shown that logistics has a significant environmental impact that should be reduced in the future
Summary
The electronic retail is getting an ever bigger market share. More and more people adopt this way of shopping. While the most prevalent online purchases in the EU are of clothes and sports goods (purchased by 65% of the internet shoppers [1]), the share of people buying food and groceries online more than doubled over the last ten years (from 13% in 2010 to 27% in 2019) [1]. This all means that there were over 87 billion parcels delivered globally and 9.3 billion parcels delivered in Europe in 2018 [2]. Even small improvements might bring substantial benefits and vice versa
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