Carbon reduction and understanding through simulation of transportation (CRUST) for e-commerce

Abstract

Online shopping has replaced a substantial percentage of brick-and-mortar shopping in the last two decades, and many consumers remain uninformed about the CO2 emission impact for both. FedEx and ShopRunner have a unique combination of data that enables the simulation of e-commerce order delivery as well as passenger vehicle trips to brick-and-mortar locations. In this work, we study the potential distribution of CO2 emissions for customer trips to retail locations and contrast this with the impact of individual e-commerce orders on CO2 emissions for delivery routes. We do this by simulating the result of adding customers to delivery routes and also simulating likely customer routes to retailer locations. These two simulations allow us to directly compare the expected CO2 emissions for both methods of shopping. The scope of this work is correspondingly limited to the trade-off in last mile delivery emissions resulting from the choice of online shopping or traveling to a retailer. This work contributes to the discussion of CO2 emissions and commerce by simulating CO2 emissions for last-mile carrier delivery or pickup by an individual. The research done in this study concludes that, when considering last-mile delivery or pickup only under the specific scenarios used for the study, having purchases delivered likely has a lower CO2 impact than traveling to a store or location to pick up a product purchased online. In addition, survey results that were gathered as a part of this study indicate a consumer preference for environmentally friendly purchase options. We also show how this information can be estimated for presentation to customers during the checkout process in an understandable manner. This study provides practical information to supply chain companies and consumers, showing that shipping and delivery options can have a positive impact on CO2 emissions.