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Re:CO2 hits new record despite Covid-19 lockdowns by hansvm on Tuesday November 24, 2020 @07:22AM (#25197770)
The last mile is loads more efficient with online shopping, but all the miles before that are worse -- rather than stores buying densely packed pallets you have a monumental amount of additional packaging being added, and the items are optimized in trucks as best they can be given upwards of 90% empty space in their boxes. Since truck fuel economy is only weakly dependent on weight this winds up using a ton more energy.

I don't have hard numbers though, which makes it hard to answer questions like "do the last-mile efficiencies outweigh other inefficiencies?"

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