Pandemic, Online Shopping, and Sustainable Living

Over the course of 60 years, climate change has been a big issue that humanity
is facing (Buis, 2019). It not only affects humans, but also other living beings such as
animals and plants. Global warming is one of the main issues of climate change, which
is mainly caused by the rising of carbon dioxide. This rising amount of carbon dioxide
builds up in the atmosphere and creates a new layer of gas trapped below our
atmosphere, which causes heating and raising temperature. The raise of temperature
causes even more problems, such as glacier meltdowns, rising sea level, and even a
global pandemic. In fact, the pandemic that we are currently facing now, is one of the
effects of climate change. According to Harvard, currently there is still no concrete
evidence of the pandemic being caused by climate change. However, with the change
of climate, many animals migrated from one place to another to get to a cooler
temperature that they can adapt to. The destruction of their habitats could also cause
them to migrate, finding new homes. With the migration, animals that are usually not in
contact with each other ends up having contact, spreading pathogens to other animals,
and the spreading could eventually form a pandemic ("Coronavirus and Climate
Change", 2021). To counter this issue, we need to cut down the root cause of it, which
is the raising of carbon dioxide caused by the high amount of carbon emission that we
produce.
With the pandemic going on, people have been in quarantine to avoid catching
the virus. Most people are going out less, eating out less, and shopping in stores less.
This leads to them shopping online for their daily needs, or even shopping for
miscellaneous things that they do not actually need. Overconsumption is an issue to
itself, whether it is done online or in stores. As for now, which one is better for the
environment? Online or in store shopping? According to an MIT researcher, Dimitri
Weideli, a lot of online shipment fails to be delivered the first time, which causes the
order to be delivered back and forth for two to three times, increasing the carbon
footprint (Weideli, 2013). Instant deliveries also increase the carbon footprints of
delivering the orders by almost three times compared to the regular shipping, where
they collect multiple packages and then deliver them to each area. The carbon footprint
produced by either online or in store shopping in the end would depend on the
customers’ behaviors themselves. For example, if the customer shops online, buying
different things from different stores just because it is cheap, the carbon footprint level
would be higher than them going to a store and buying those items all at once. While if
the customer shops online and buys in bulk, the footprint of the shipment would be a lot
less, especially if it is directly sent from the warehouse to their homes. However, the
packaging issues that comes with online shopping is also a problem, especially with
sellers overly wrapping their packages because some customers do not like it when the
box of their items came damaged. This overpackaging cannot be avoided, but when it
comes to in store shopping, we can reduce this by bringing our own bag to take the
goods that we bought. Overall, online shopping could be a more sustainable choice to
shop, but it depends on how each person shops. It would be better to buy in bulk or buy
a locally sourced item to reduce the carbon emission of the goods that we need.

References
Buis, A., 2019. The Atmosphere: Getting a Handle on Carbon Dioxide – Climate
Change: Vital Signs of the Planet. [online] NASA. Available at:
<https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2915/the-atmosphere-getting-a-handle-on-carbon-
dioxide/> [Accessed 27 February 2021].
Coronavirus and Climate Change. C-CHANGE | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public
Health. (2021). Retrieved 5 May 2021, from https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-
change/subtopics/coronavirus-and-climate-change/#:~:text=We%20don't%20have
%20direct,and%20our%20risk%20for%20infections.&text=Many%20of%20the%20root
%20causes,increase%20the%20risk%20of%20pandemics.
Weideli, D. (2013). Environmental Analysis of US Online Shopping. Retrieved 5 May
2021, from.