What's the Environmental Impact of Online Shopping?

This post first appeared in our weekly Make Waves Mondays email series on March 22, 2021, and was updated and re-shared again on March 2, 2026.

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Hello hello, friend!

For today’s post, we’re revisiting one of my favorite topics — the sustainability of online shopping versus in-person shopping.

Sure, it’s one of my favorite topics because I sell sustainable products on the internet, but it’s also one of my favorite topics because the answer to “Is it more sustainable to shop in person or online?” is surprising to a lot of people.

It’s a topic that I see come up often on the zero waste subreddit, and it’s one of those topics that most people assume the answer to be one thing, but once you actually have a conversation about it, you often have a “That actually makes a lot of sense!” moment.

This topic is also the reason that we don’t have a pickup or in-person option for our Tacoma-local EcoWarriors. 

Everything we do around here is so intentional and backed by science, and this is absolutely one of those things.

So let’s dive in! 👇

The Impact of Packaging

Okay so let’s start with the obvious first: packaging.

Online shopping comes with a lot of packaging. We inherently know this. We’ve seen our neighborhood recycling bins overflowing with Amazon boxes.

But what’s the real impact of all that packaging?

According to a 2022 study out of Sogang University in South Korea, packaging waste is about 4.8 times greater for online shopping than in-person shopping, and every $100 spent online instead of in-person generates an additional 3.4kg (7.5lbs) of packaging waste.

Which, yes, is not great.

Yes, and… 

According to a 2011 LA Times article reviewing a Carnegie Mellon study (that unfortunately I cannot find a direct link to), packaging only accounts for about 22% of a package’s carbon footprint.

Even the author of that study was quoted as saying that he was most surprised by “how small an impact packaging really has, particularly with the growth of recycling channels for packaging.”

Now, 22% is not a small percentage.

And 7.5 pounds is not a small amount.

And, yes, both of those numbers would be smaller from shopping in-person with our own shopping bags.

But a 2014 study made an interesting observation that I have often said myself, but never seen it mentioned in studies like this until now: when something is sold exclusively online direct to consumers, there’s less need for “pretty” packaging, or packaging that’s designed to “sell” the product.

Instead, the product images, descriptions, and reviews can do more of that heavy lifting. So online-only products can often be less packaged or packaged in more simplistic, easily-recyclable or compostable packaging than products sold on store shelves.

So while there absolutely is an increase in packaging from the shipping box and protective packaging with online shopping, there is also an opportunity to reduce packaging waste from the products themselves.

How A Drop in the Ocean limits our packaging impacts:

We’re always doing everything we can to minimize our packaging, and even have a whole behind-the-scenes blog post on our website diving into how we keep things zero waste on our end. But here’s how we’re keeping things as low waste as possible on your end, too:

• We reuse shipping boxes. In 2025 we didn’t purchase a single shipping box or envelope. Literally not one. The last time we purchased shipping boxes was October 18, 2024.
  
  Instead, we collect boxes from our neighbors, friends, other small businesses, and local customers. We even have a partnership with the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium vet staff to collect boxes and packing paper from them once a month that would otherwise go to waste.
  
  In the 7 years since we opened our virtual doors, we’ve received over 13,000 orders, yet we’ve only purchased 200 recycled kraft shipping envelopes and 280 recycled shipping boxes.
  

 

• We have never once purchased internal packing materials. Every single piece of internal packing we’ve ever used was either collected from our community or reused from our inventory shipments.
  
  

• We keep local delivery orders as unpackaged as possible. When we do need to wrap something for a little protection against the elements, we simply use reused kraft paper. Then we’ll use a little bit of hemp twine to tie everything together like a pretty ‘lil gift, and that’s it!
  
  Any time we use a paper bag for a larger delivery order, it’s always a reused paper bag — we’ve never purchased paper bags or reusable bags for our delivery orders.
  
  

• Most of our products are package-free. We definitely fall into the category of “We’re totally online so we don’t need packaging to sell for us!” About 72% of the products we sell are either 100% package-free or closed-loop refillable, so there’s little to no product packaging for our EcoWarriors to dispose of when they receive their order.

The Impact of Carbon Emissions

Okay, so packaging is just a small piece of the online shopping sustainability puzzle.

So what’s the carbon footprint of online and in-person shopping, then?

According to that same Carnegie Mellon study, consumer driving accounts for a whopping 65% of an item’s footprint when it’s purchased in-store.

Sixty. Five. Percent. 😳

Surprising as it may be, delivery trucks are actually WAY more efficient at delivering packages than for you to pick up those same items from the store.

Unfortunately, I can’t find any updated numbers for this, or any numbers like this for USPS, but in 2010, UPS reported that they use about 0.117 gallons of fuel to deliver one package. An average passenger car, in comparison, would use about 0.636 gallons of fuel to pick up that same package.

That’s five times more gasoline (and 4.6kg more carbon dioxide emissions!) to pick up a package rather than have it delivered.

A 2013 study from the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics took a DEEP dive into consumer behaviors and how different types of shopping have different environmental impacts. The behaviors ranged from doing everything in-person, to doing everything online, to everything in between.

They found that a shopper who does everything in person — product research, purchasing, and returns — has a significantly higher carbon footprint than a shopper who does everything online…EXCEPT when the shopper opts for expedited shipping.

But here’s the super interesting part that still has me geeking out…

A fully in-person shopper (let’s call her Kelly) has a carbon footprint of about 3.1kg CO2e.

💡 CO2 equivalent (CO2e) is the standard unit of measure for carbon footprints. It takes all the greenhouse gas emissions and standardizes them to carbon dioxide emissions, rather than breaking them out into carbon dioxide, methane, etc.

About 2.5kg of Kelly’s 3.1kg impact is from her own transportation. That’s about 80% of her shopping impacts!

Now let’s compare Kelly’s fully in-person shopping experience with a fully-online shopper. Let’s call her Joan.

Joan’s shopping footprint is only about 1.5kg CO2e — already about half the impact of Kelly’s! And, yes, the majority of Joan’s impact is from packaging (about 1kg CO2e). Delivery only accounts for about 0.3kg CO2, and Joan has no consumer transportation impact.

NOW, where things get really interesting is when we look at a shopper who opts for a local pickup option instead of delivery. Let’s call her Louise.

Louse’s shopping footprint is about 2.0kg CO2e. So her footprint is quite a bit less than Kelly’s, but also more than Joan’s.

About 75% of Louise’s emissions (1.5kg CO2e) are from her own transportation.

Here’s a handy-dandy graph from the study 🥰

 

Kelly = Traditional Shopper  |  Joan = Cybernaut  |  Louise = C - Pick Up

 

And these numbers have been backed up by other studies.

A 2016 study out of Sweden found that the carbon emissions associated with shopping trips for someone who frequently or regularly shops online is about 45% lower than someone who never or seldom shops online, and that in conjunction with estimated population increases, by 2030, shopping online could actually decrease all shopping emissions by 22%.

However, in that same scenario, placing an order online but picking up the items in store would actually increase the emissions associated with these trips by a whopping 176% 😱

But what about public transit??

You’ve probably noticed that all of the numbers so far are comparing a delivery truck to a personal vehicle. But what if you take public transportation instead??

A 2009 study in the UK found that driving to the store to purchase one small (non-food) item emits about 24 times more carbon than having that same item shipped to your home.

And taking the bus to the store still emits 7 times more carbon.

In general, the study found that shopping online is 8.3 times better than driving to the store, and 2.8 times better than taking the bus to the store.

This quote from the 2016 Swedish study is especially worth noting, and so interesting to consider how shopping and public transportation can work together for better city planning:

“Based on the current situation and policies, an important question is what is needed in order to make online shopping contribute to a transport system that supports a sustainable future. At best, online shopping can be used to support less car-dependent planning and to encourage policies for enhancing the transition towards a society with zero emissions.”

How A Drop in the Ocean limits our shipping / delivery emissions:

We’ve put a lot of thought and intention into how we get your orders to you, and we’re constantly evaluating and adjusting. But here’s how we’re keeping the emissions from your orders as low as possible:

• We only ship through USPS. USPS delivers to every address in the country. So whether you’ve got a package coming to you or not, that postal worker is driving past your home every day, and they’re probably stopped to deliver at least one piece of mail. By shipping through USPS, we’re not adding any additional trucks on the road, or additional routes.
  
  

• We don’t drive to the post office. My wonderful mail carrier, Amanda, picks up your packages from my doorstep on her normal route. (That 2014 study I mentioned before even confirmed that when delivery drivers pick up packages as part of their delivery route, there’s essentially no increase in emissions!)
  
  

• We keep a tight radius for local deliveries. We deliver around the Tacoma area once a week, and only within about a 10 mile radius of our HQ. This way, we maximize our time on the road and minimize our footprint. Our route is optimized each week to be the most efficient route possible, and I never leave the car idling.

 

On the road for some local deliveries!

 

• We offset every mile we drive. Every mile I drive for our weekly local deliveries (and for any other ADITO-related purpose) is offset through our tree planting partner.
  
  
• We plant 1 tree for every item purchased. We don’t specifically offset the emissions from each individual order, but we do plant 1 tree for every item ordered, and once they get to maturity, each of those trees is going to offset about 48 pounds of CO2 every year. To date, we’ve planted nearly 80,000 trees!

What I’m Not Saying (and What Not to Do)

Nearly every time I talk about this, I get some kind of “BuT wHaT aBoUt…?!” comment, always with an air of “mwahahah I’m gonna catch her with this one! 😈” 

So let’s get some of these out of the way now, shall we?

We cannot consume our way into a sustainable future for all living things.

Just because replacing a trip to the store with a purchase from an online shop is more environmentally friendly, does not in any way mean that I’m writing you a blank check to just go buy a bunch of stuff online that you don’t actually need.

We need to buy less. Full stop.

So don’t treat shopping like a hobby, or like your nightly doomscroll. Close the shopping apps. Unsubscribe from emails that only want you to buy, buy, buy! Wait 30 days before making a purchase. Be intentional with how you spend your money.

The convenience of online shopping can cause overconsumption and unnecessary piles of waste. I’d never deny that. So treat it like a tool — not an escape.

And when you do need to buy something, make the best choice you can, when you can, where you can.

Don’t over-buy with the intention of returning items you don’t want.

Unfortunately, part of the way that online shopping has morphed over the years is this practice of buying more than you actually want or need, with the full intention of returning your unwanted items a few days later.

This is especially prevalent in the clothing space, but I’ve seen it in other markets as well.

So before buying something, do your research. Know your measurements. Only purchase what you know you need, and whatever you do don’t fall into the trap of, “Oh well if I don’t like it I can just send it back.”

‘Cause it’s a trap.

Amazon is not a good / sustainable / ethical company.

I REALLY hope that you know that this is my stance by now, but just because online shopping has a lower carbon footprint than in-person shopping does not, at all, by any means whatsoever, mean that you should buy from Amazon. 

These are two completely different conversations in my book.

Ditch Amazon. Break up with Bezos. And never look back.

What You Can Do

Alright so given everything we’ve covered today, let’s get into what you, friend, can do to put all of this into practice.

Especially for places you can’t sustainably “chain together” in one local trip, opt for shipping! The 2014 study noted that the emissions saved by shopping online instead of in-person are significantly higher for one-off trips versus “chained’ shopping trips. (For example, driving an hour to your closest refill store (an example I see often on social media) versus optimizing an errands run with many stops within a small radius.)

Don’t opt for in-store pickup. Let the optimized delivery systems do the work for you!

Choose slow shipping! A lot of the benefits of online shopping disappear once expedited shipping gets involved. So choose the slowest shipping option available to you when shopping online to keep your package’s footprint as small as possible.

Go to the store with a plan. According to a 2021 study out of France, apparently the third-most purchased product type at the store is NOTHING 🤯 16% of people who leave their homes to go to a store walk out of said store without buying a single dang thing. Now THAT is a waste of time, energy, resources, and money.

When you order online, order more items at once when you can. Another 2014 study in the UK noted that ordering more items at once rather than less items more often reduces the shipping footprint even more, since it reduces the total number of deliveries (and packaging).

Buy less. Just in general. Buy less. Use what you have. We already have too much “stuff.”

And with that, friend, I will leave you to your day! But first, let me know what you thought of this week’s post! Was it at all surprising to you? Comment below and let’s chat about it!

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Sources + Additional Reading:
Dimitri Weideli, MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics: Environmental Analysis of US Online Shopping
The net environmental impact of online shopping, beyond the substitution bias
Honestly Modern: Is Online or In-Store Shopping More Eco-Friendly?
LA Times: Online Shopping: Better for the Environment?
NPR: Are Plastic Bag Bans Garbage?
Polly Barks: Is online shopping eco-friendly?

Related:
What happens to all of the stuff we return?