COVID initiates online retail debate

With the light at the end of the tunnel coming ever so slowly for this pandemic, online consumerism habits have created an array of opportunities, shortcomings and lazy tendencies that have stayed around even after what has seemed like the worst of COVID-19.

Due to patterns that we have all fallen into and gotten comfortable with, the ability and access to online shopping has grown with ease to a reality where people do not have to leave their residences for virtually anything. From clothes shopping to grocery deliveries, people can buy products online and receive them days later.

With the internet handing us unlimited information at our fingertips, not all these coping mechanisms brought by the pandemic were bad for our planet.

Because of the necessity to move sales online due to a lack of in person shopping beginning in the spring of 2020, two years later we are still reaping the benefits of this homogenized shift to a virtual reality. While this did not come without loss, as a considerable number of small businesses, local markets and individualized shops were run into the ground shortly after the deficit of foot traffic in stores, a growing amount of sustainable shopping sites have now popped up for everyone to access.

For sellers that made it online, business is booming. Sites like Etsy, Food52, Made Trade and Thrive Market are examples of locally sourced, sustainable shopping sites that are competing with big name companies, such as Amazon.

Sadly, the competition is not as significant as environmentalists would like. Although there may be eco-friendly options out there, the data shows that customers continually rely on stores like Amazon for all their online shopping needs.

In 2020, Amazon’s annual revenue peaked at $386 billion, an astonishing growth compared to $232.8 billion in 2018. This begs the question: What’s wrong with buying from Amazon?

Although convenience seems to trump ethical and sustainable options, it is important to understand the downsides of buying from a mega distributor.

First, up until recent years, Amazon and other retailers have been notorious for shipping items with boxes or bags that are way too big or contain extraneous amounts of padding.

While this may not cause immediate aversive effects on the environment with proper recycling habits, it’s wasteful and can be overwhelming to customers who may not know what to recycle or throw away and end up throwing everything in one bin or the other. Knowing that the tape and shipping labels from packages cannot be recycled is a small piece of sustainable online shopping that is made harder by wasteful shipping habits seen by major retailers.

Second, even though sales from Amazon create and sustain thousands of jobs, do you know where the profits end up going? If Amazon employed 1,298,000 people in 2020 and their annual revenue was $386 billion, does that mean that each employee was paid $297,000 in the year 2020?

While this is a gross oversimplification of how their profits are distributed, it’s an important concept to consider who, what and how you are supporting when you choose to buy from Amazon and not Etsy, for example. Unlike companies such as Amazon, buying from localized, small businesses ensures that customers know who is benefitting from their purchases, who is helping with their order or making their products and where the materials, labor and items are sourced.

Store like Amazon have revolutionized the ability to make and distribute a variety of products efficiently to supply a growing number of people in need within the uncertainty of a pandemic. Even though stores like these may fuel our ever changing “new normal,” post-pandemic lifestyles, I struggle to label these companies as sustainable.

We may have relied on Amazon and other sites it while our world ebbed and flowed through shutdown after shutdown, yet now more than ever is the time to invest in locally produced, eco-friendly, handmade, sustainable ways of life.

With the internet at our fingertips, almost everyone has access to these resources that will make an impact in your life and the lives of others, creating and sustaining relationships between producers and consumers.