Shopping

 

More and more, instead of going out, we just click what we want on Amazon.com.  What we buy shows up at our door two days later.

 

I think about the logic of having a big delivery truck deliver to our house every day.  It makes economic sense for us, considering it doesn’t cost any more for us, and that our time to run shopping errands is part of our economy.

 

I wonder if Amazon shopping makes sense for the planet.  We’re not buying stuff we weren’t going to buy anyway.  If each purchase was going to require a trip to go get it, it probably makes more sense to have a big delivery van distributing a hundred packages, than for a hundred people to be out running these errands in their cars.  Next to consider is the cardboard.  That’s an awful lot of cardboard cartons being delivered to our house.  We break them down and put them all in recycling.  I presume if they don’t get re-assembled and used again as-is (and they probably don’t), they all get melted down into material that will make the next crop of cardboard boxes.  Either way, they won’t be going in the landfill.

 

So, I conclude that Amazon.com is good for us, and is probably okay for the planet as well.  J