
Reliance on the internet and mobile devices to do business leads to the so-called E-commerce. The term is hardly old, based on its adoption in the 2000s after the internet revolution. E-commerce is a real force in the present and future business world due to several facets. For example, the invention’s capacity to eliminate reliance on the costly brick-and-mortar system of doing business makes it favorable to many investors. Equally, e-commerce’s unique traits, such as reduced entry barriers and readily available large stocks of online customers, make the aspect highly cherished. The invention comes at the right time when the world’s population leads a busy life, while its needs often beat local producers’ ability.
The world’s rapid adoption of e-commerce justifies the invention’s match to people’s unique needs. Citizens worldwide never have to walk or travel to buy commodities or struggle to search for unavailable stuff inside sparingly located stores like before during the e-commerce age. Such unmatchable benefits make e-commerce a real force cherished by many.
Nothing reveals the essence of e-commerce more than the COVID-19 pandemic state. Reported first in the mid of 2019, the epidemic causes significant pressure on humans by changing virtually every past way of living. The closure of businesses to protect people from contracting the deadly contagious virus changed working conditions significantly (Saeed, Bader, Al-Naffouri, and Alouini, 2020). Organizations seeking to survive the global plague thus resulted in working online, using the internet and e-commerce strategies to beat the challenging situation. Moreover, the worldwide population relied substantially on technology to acquire life’s necessities due to the enacted quarantines. Such benefits make many people blindly accept the invention without caring about its effects on other fundamental aspects, such as the environment. Like any other facet, e-commerce exhibits both beneficial and harmful effects on the environment, thus requiring moderation.
Positive Impacts of E-Commerce on the Environment
Other than making people’s lives easier and fairer, e-commerce poses several beneficial effects on the environment. The following discussion reveals some of the invention’s paybacks about the surroundings.
Transport Emissions
The e-commerce business model operates differently from the traditional brick-and-mortar structure that requires vast parcels of land and a large workforce traveling to the offices every morning. Relying on the internet means that businesses selling items online requires a lesser number of stores or smaller size machine-intensive production units that can produce on-demand items (Gaffer, 2016). Therefore, the reduced need for land parcels implies a decrease in the natural ecosystem’s destruction, thus saving the environment. According to Collins (2021), transportation is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gases that harm the environment substantially. Therefore, having people work from home makes the e-commerce model beneficial to the environment by reducing harmful transportation emissions from commuter vehicles.
Paper Waste
Business records play a major role in organizations’ survival, leading to the storage of almost every activity’s details. Filling physical receipts, invoices, purchasing orders, permits, and other essential documents formed a crucial part of businesses’ operations prior to the e-commerce era. Some companies even set aside massive record stores to manage the aspect. Most of the papers used in storing such details, together with paper waste from packaging material, ended up in waste sites, leading to massive paper litter with immense effects on the environment. Additionally, relying on papers to conduct business implies cutting down trees and clearing forests to acquire indispensable writing materials. Therefore, e-commerce is highly beneficial to the environment due to its ability to eliminate paper reliance and waste from businesses.
Digital Storage
Lastly, e-commerce promotes digital storage while eliminating reliance on warehouses that require a large workforce and emissive machinery that harms the environment. Collins (2021) cheers on the creation of digital manufacturing tactics due to e-commerce as an effective environmental protection initiative. Businesses operating online mostly do not keep large stocks of products due to storage limitations. Consequently, the replacement of large environmentally unsafe traditional storage techniques with digital storage methods proves e-commerce’s benefits to the environment.
Negative Impacts of E-Commerce on the Environment
Transportation Emissions
E-commerce promotes unregulated buying and excessive order volume relative to the traditional model of business. The matter pushes investors to acquire numerous delivery vehicles to meet the rising demand and urgency. Such machines mostly run on fossil fuels, thus causing excessive emissions that harm the environment (LaRosa, 2001). Collins (2021) observes that congestions caused by the numerous delivery vehicles lead to traffic that worse the emission problem. Consequently, the rigorous movement of vehicles as they deliver small and large orders to customers to meet urgent requirements significantly cancels the benefit realized through having workers work from home.
Packaging
The rise in consumer demand and the streamlining of supply chain mechanisms imply an increase in packaging waste. Escursell, Llorach-Massana, and Roncero (2021) note that almost all the items sold online have packaging material that becomes waste on reaching the consumer. Directives to recycle or reuse such material almost fail always due to consumers’ mentality that every demanded item is available online. The aspect thus leads to landfills and the presence of harmful plastic material along river beds and oceans, which affect the environment adversely.
Item Returns
Ordering items online from an e-commerce dealer without first interacting with the product as before promotes the item returns challenge. The returned products involve double transportation, handling, and possibly packaging, inferring a two-fold impact on the environment. This reveals special issues with e-commerce, as the problem is never common in the traditional model of doing business. Consequently, emissions from returning vehicles and the waste resulting from the handling and repackaging of items prove e-commerce is a real threat to the environment.
Unemployment and Environmentally Unsafe Survival Tactics
The E-commerce model’s requirement of a reduced workforce and excessive competition to the brick-and-mortar companies, leading to their closure, contributes directly to unemployment and environmental harm. According to Karine (2021), online operations in many developing economies worldwide push formerly employed populations to environmentally unfriendly survival tactics. Such activities cause much harm to the environment; therefore, the excessive pressure that online business causes on natural resources by supporting unsustainable demand makes the model’s sustainability questionable, thus the need for moderation.
Models for Sustainable E-Commerce