Online Shopping is a Package Deal

All that discarded packaging doesn’t just vanish in the ether. The sheer quantity of what we consume will astonish you.

Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash

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Watching our daughter run a marathon recently via an app connection was a thrill. Her bib number had a chip in it that allowed us to track her race from start to finish. When you follow along in real time you get to see not just your runner as they advance, but all the landmarks, medical tents, and well marked water stations.

Lots of water stations.

And if you were in my head you’d also be connecting some dots: lots of water stations means lots of water cups.

That would be thousands of runners drinking from tens of thousands of disposable cups over tens of thousands of marathons.

What happens to all those cups they use? What landfill do they end up in?

Yes, call me crazy, but that’s how I think.

It wasn’t long afterwards that an opinion piece appeared in my inbox about the impact that online shopping is having on New York City. If you want to get granular, that translates into 2.4 million packages that get delivered every single weekday. In her essay, “The City that Never Sleeps…Or Shops in Person,” writer Sonja Anderson puts it this way:

If those packages were people, they’d be metropolitan Austin, Texas. If they were stone blocks, they’d top the Great Pyramid of Giza. Even if each of those packages were as thin as the Postal Service’s smallest priority shipping box — an inch and three-quarters thick — when stacked like books, the daily pile would be as tall as 241 Empire State Buildings, one atop the other.

Every single day! 😱😳🤯

That is a tremendous amount of packaging that doesn’t just magically vanish in the ether. It has to go somewhere.

It begs the question: Where does it all go? How much of the packaging is consciously recycled or repurposed by each homeowner? How much of it gets tossed into the trash and ends up getting dumped into yet another landfill?

I don’t have the answers. What I can offer is a suggestion — an invitation — that we step up our level of awareness to help reduce impulse buying, unconscious consumption, and waste. Call it my online shopping reduction act, if you will. It involves taking a few extra seconds to ask three simple questions before hitting the buy button.

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Before you hit the ‘buy’ button when shopping online, take a pause, and consider these questions:

• Do I absolutely need this?

• If so, is it something I can buy at a brick and mortar store just as easily?

• If not, do I have a plan (or system) for how to recycle the packaging once it arrives?

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As Anderson wisely points out..

It’s time to relearn the commuter’s detour, the leaving of the house or the simple abstention from an unnecessary online purchase. If you can, try cutting online ordering for a month. Consider the difference between want and need. Buy used things. Save money. Save carbon. Discover what your city has to offer. It’s a dare.

It may be too big a challenge for some, but adding more awareness each time a package arrives at our doorstep goes a long way to reducing unnecessary waste.

And it’s a heck of a lot easier than running a 26.2 mile marathon!

Ahhh 🏡

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PS… one more thing. Going into delirious rants over the chaotic state of our world is not where we are going with this. Naming the pain and feeling it fully is a much more productive and spacious way to open doors that can bring us back into balance.

Online shopping reduction act

When it comes clearing, less is more. When it comes to growing awareness, more is more.

Unconscious consumption is an epidemic. Please share this post with others and let’s lighten our collective load.

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