It's not easy being green

"Will people just buy more and more things because it's even easier? And will people want it air-shipped overnight, and will they air-ship it back when they don't want it?" asks Alissa Gravits, executive director of Co-op America, a nonprofit environmental group. If e-commerce makes it so much easier for the "born to shop" masses to buy things, some ecologically minded critics worry the additional consumption could wipe out whatever incremental environmental benefit there may be to transactions done online. Josh Karliner, executive editor of Corporate Watch, a watchdog group, puts it this way: "The biggest environmental problem in the world today is American overconsumption. So if we're going to consume more and more resources by buying more superfluous goods over the Web, then e-commerce is only contributing to the biggest environmental problem in the world today."

Still, there are some macroeconomic energy consumption trends that are heartening. According to Romm, between 1992 and 1996 the demand for energy rose 2.3 percent a year, while from 1996 to 2000 the demand for energy rose only 1 percent; at the same time, gross domestic product increased.

"That's a very large drop," says Romm, a former acting assistant secretary of energy at the U.S. Department of Energy. "I think some of it is because the Internet allows a type of growth that doesn't require as much inventory and as much energy and as much transportation."

Even in the face of inconclusive research about the ecology of e-commerce, there's one fact that's crystal clear. Mainstream shopping sites could do more to help. E-commerce companies could painlessly offer a "green" shipping option. All it would take is marketing ground shipping as a way to help the environment, and letting consumers make the choice themselves. "I've suggested it to Amazon.com, and it isn't a priority for them," says Cohen. With e-commerce still struggling in its toddlerhood it would take an enlightened e-tailer, indeed, to fight the customer's urge for instant gratification. Who wants to point out how much slower your distribution is than a trip to the store?

Romm says the tightening of belts at many dot-coms may paradoxically benefit the environment. "I think that with the collapse of the NASDAQ and the dot-coms you're seeing a lot fewer companies offering free overnight [shipping] because it's too big of an expense." How's that medicine? Fewer freebies may ultimately be good for you!

And don't be so quick to blame the companies. There hasn't exactly been an outcry from concerned consumers demanding greener shipping options from e-commerce sites, or even an outcry from environmental groups, for that matter. "I think a lot of people are still in the honeymoon phase with e-commerce to think anything bad about it," says Matthews. "It's none of the companies' faults they're providing the service that customers want. If no one wanted it overnight, they wouldn't be selling it."

And environmental groups may also be in the throes of just such a honeymoon. Joel Makower, president of the Green Business Network, points out that many environmental groups are engaged in e-commerce partnerships with sites that market so-called green products. "I think the environmental groups have to look fairly carefully at their own e-commerce offerings before they can participate in any larger conversation about the environmental impact of the Internet. It's clear that the environmental community is fairly smitten with the technology, as an organizing tool and as a tool to sell 'green' things from T-shirts to toilet paper."

If there is one single message for environmentally conscious online shoppers, it's this: Don't wait until the last minute to do your Christmas shopping -- if not just to save your sanity, then to help save the energy sure to be consumed in all those "next day" FedEx and UPS orgies. "People need to know that all these little choices add up," says Rejeski. "Most people don't think about that, and most sites aren't telling people."

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