With the enormous amount of stuff people order from AliExpress, it seems unreasonable that all of it gets shipped via excess capacity.

I mean that's pretty much the whole trick to it. It gets to the boat with the rest of the mail, and batched with all the other people are shipping to the US, and then delivered to your door with the rest of the mail.

I can't imagine that there's a significant environmental impact outside of what it already takes for normal imports and and your daily mail.

Of course it gets shipped with others, and if delivery takes weeks or months, it probably gets shipped fairly efficiently by sea. But it still gets shipped over a long distance. I'd rather see more local products and less intercontinental shipment except in cases where it's unavoidable.

Besides, a lot of products on AliExpress don't actually meet western safety standards. They're not allowed to be imported and sold here, but you can buy them abroad and ship them to a private customer. But they still won't meet our standards.

I don't really see a difference, as most of the consummer products are built in China and get shipped anyway...

I'm not denying the environmetal impact, but that's not from Ali Express, it's from us building everything there because it's cheaper.

Huge difference. Products that are intended to be sold overseas are made to comply with the recipient country's safety standards (although the Chinese are notorious for cheating around that in every way they can and quality control + liability is ultimately up to the importer). Random shit that you buy on alibaba, isn't.

There are several entire youtube channels dedicated to dismantling chinesium gadgets and showing how they'll burn your house down. Lack of reverse current protection, lack of overcurrent protection, trace spacing that's way too small and will arc under the right temp/humidity, mains side traces right next to each other, no grounding, ground shorted to neutral, under-rated caps and resistors that reach unsafely high temperatures, etc, etc.

There is an important difference between products built there and sold there, and products built there and sold here. The product have to obey safety and other standards of the country where they're sold. And those standards differ quite a lot between the EU and China. They can use banned chemicals, and fail many other requirements.

In the EU, products that conform to EU standards can be identified with a 'CE' logo[0], which means "Conformité Européenne". "Chinese Export" can have a deceptively similar logo[1] that does not guarantee such adherence at all, but still looks comforting to European customers of Chinese web shops. It's a blatant violation, but hard to stop, because it's a foreign sale shipped to private customers.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking

[1] https://siloscordoba.com/blog/corporate/china-export-is-not-...

There's no such thing as a Chinese Export or China Export mark, it's an urban myth (see your own link).

Whether or not it exists seems to be mostly a matter of interpretation. Is the incorrect mark just a misprint while Chinese products with the correct mark are just as likely to fail to meet EU standards? Either way, that cheap products from China regularly fail the standards does not seem to be disputed by anyone. And if those products are sold in the EU, it's fairly easy to address, but if they're sold in China and mailed to the EU, it's not so easy to enforce. The problem remains the same, whether or not you see it as intentional or not.

It's the difference between deliberate (creating a confusing mark to legalistically "bypass" CE regulations - this is the myth) and negligence (China not bothering to enforce the standards set by other countries or even its own quality and safety standards - this is well known).

Germany seems to care more than other EU countries about such things like CE. They don't have trouble turning away imports based just because it's shipped to private customers.

Just ask people trying to receive PinePhones in Germany.

You don't have a german manual? Bye bye, try again later.

Similarly the UL logo and ETL Intertek logo serve the same purpose in the US. If something doesn’t have a UL logo it’s probably not safe.

I think you're barking up the wrong tree.

There may be ways to be greener by manufacturing near consumers... but that doesn't have much to do with amazon vs alibaba. These products are manufactured in the same places.

Not sure what tree you think I'm barking up. I do think the issue of local production and less transportation is an important issue; not everything is just about Amazon and Alibaba. But even if you just focus on those, Amazon at least has to obey local standards for the country in which they sell. Products from Aliexpress only obey Chinese standards, which are very different. And sometimes they ship with misleading logos which could suggest to European customers that they obey EU rules when they don't.

> Amazon at least has to obey local standards for the country in which they sell.

In theory. In practice resellers are free to dropship whatever they want from AliExpress to Amazon and sell at a markup.

True. Amazon also clearly has a problem with counterfeit goods (as addressed on HN repeatedly in the past), and that's not sufficiently enforced. But at least it's possible to enforce. That's not to easy when the shop is outside your jurisdiction.

I'm still not seeing your point.

This is an article about postage. It's not about counterfeits or locally produced goods.

Counterfeits are generally not locally produced and mostly come from China via the subsidized slow boat. The counterfeit industry exists on Amazon because the potential for profit is so high and the risk is almost non-existent.

This article is not just about postage. It's about how cheap postage from China has subsidized Chinese webshops selling cheap crap to Europe and the US.

> Products from Aliexpress only obey Chinese standards,

Not necessarily... In cases something s not marketed for the domestic market, Chinese electrical (and many others) standards do not apply.

And it is not something given even if they were...

> delivery takes weeks or months, it probably gets shipped fairly efficiently by sea.

No, most of goes around as airmail. In fact, actual physical transport times are super low.

In fact, sea shipments can be faster than that. There are container lines shipping Shenzhen-Losangeles in just 7-10 days.

> But it still gets shipped over a long distance.

So do Amazon products.

> I'd rather see more local products

How is that related? I asked for sources that would confirm claims about worse environmental impact of Aliexpress vs Amazon.