Myti was started as an alternative to e-commerce giants for those who wish to protect our local communities and economies, support small local businesses, and protect our environment from the impacts of an online shopping. So how exactly are we doing that? Here’s how the current e-commerce industry is harming the environment, and how Myti is doing things differently.
Shipping one product at a time
The transportation of individual products around the United States generates a significant negative impact on the environment. About 950 million packages make the round-trip journey from the Amazon warehouse to the hands of the consumer, and then back to Amazon resulting in 19 million metric tons of carbon emissions annually.
Each year, around 5.8 billion pounds of returned goods end up in U.S. landfills because it is more economical to discard than it is to restock. E-commerce experiences a higher rate of returns compared to traditional retail, estimated at 20-30% according to the National Retail Federation. The environmental impact of purchase returns, often overlooked in ecological footprint calculations, is a commonly hidden cost of e-commerce transactions.
A typical logistics system in an e-commerce company generates about one pound of carbon emissions for every 119 packages delivered. The trend of prioritizing ultra-fast delivery through large warehouse fulfillment centers further exacerbates climate change, as it leads to increased mileage, fuel consumption, and emissions per delivery. This problem escalated during the pandemic as consumers demanded instant gratification, resulting in a surge of single-item orders.
Shipping from regional warehouses
Even though large fulfillment warehouses tend to be located by airports and major highways, the trip from one of those warehouses to your front door takes a shocking amount of energy. At a minimum, shipping an individual package from an Amazon warehouse will take three trucks spewing greenhouse gas emissions. Depending on which warehouse it comes from, it could require five trucks and a plane!
Myti’s model uses a network of local depots to distribute items that have been shipped, in bulk, to local stores. This approach is generates the absolute minimum environmental impact. Our fleet of electric vehicles completes the last mile of delivery, generating virtual zero emissions to get your order to your doorstep.
Single-use packaging
While cardboard is easily recyclable, 1/3 of all cardboard boxes goes to landfills. So what happens with the other 2/3? The vast majority gets shipped on heavy fuel-oil burning container ships to China where it is processed and turned back into boxes to be shipped back to the U.S. on the same oil burning vessels. This doesn’t even consider the plastic packaging that is not recyclable. Amazon alone generated 500 Million pounds of it, 22 million pounds of which ended up in rivers, lakes and oceans.
Myti doesn’t use cardboard or plastic packaging. We use reusable bags made from 100% recycled materials when we deliver your products.
Are you on board? Join us as we change online shopping… for good. Or, check out the infographic below that describes much of what we discussed in this post.
Sources:
https://frontiergroup.org/articles/crisis-convenience-why-your-amazon-box-going-straight-trash/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2020/12/15/this-is-how-much-plastic-from-amazon-deliveries-ends-up-in-the-ocean/?sh=560cd7c663b4
