Amazon.com Inc announced that it would disclose its carbon footprint later this year, giving consumers and investors new insight into the environmental cost of its popular two-day shipping.
The company also pledged in a blogpost on Monday that half of its shipments would be “net zero” carbon — also known as carbon-neutral — by 2030.
The world’s biggest e-commerce company has for years resisted pressure from investors and other stakeholders to disclose more information about its environmental impact.
Late last year, several Amazon employees used their stock grants to submit shareholder proposals asking the company to devise and disclose its plans for climate change.
Estimating the emissions from e-commerce is complicated. Ordering something online is often less energy intensive than driving to and from a physical store to pick up an item, because shipping can take advantage of economies of scale.
However, the benefit declines rapidly as delivery times get shorter and when customers do not group items together, Massachusetts Institute of Technology sustainable logistics professor Josue Velazquez-Martinez said.
That is a challenge for Amazon, which now counts more than 100 million Prime members, all of whom are eligible for two-day shipping.
“When customers want to receive a product in one or two days, the carbon emissions increase substantially,” Velazquez-Martinez said. “If you are willing to wait a week, it’s like killing just 20 trees instead of 100 trees.”
Amazon did not say whether it would be buying carbon offsets outright, and absent that, the most likely way for it to reach its emissions goals would be to fine-tune its delivery process.
The “last mile” of delivery — from a warehouse to a customer’s home, for example — is often one of the largest costs for e-retailers, Velazquez-Martinez said.
“They’ve definitely been a leader in terms of reducing packaging waste and purchasing renewable energy, but they still have a lot of improvements they can make,” Nuveen head of exchange-traded funds Martin Kremenstein said.
Social issues are becoming a bigger concern for Amazon, highlighted by concerns about labor, wages and its local impact after it withdrew a plan for a second headquarters in New York City, he said.
Taiwanese suppliers to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) are expected to follow the contract chipmaker’s step to invest in the US, but their relocation may be seven to eight years away, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. When asked by opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Niu Hsu-ting (牛煦庭) in the legislature about growing concerns that TSMC’s huge investments in the US will prompt its suppliers to follow suit, Kuo said based on the chipmaker’s current limited production volume, it is unlikely to lead its supply chain to go there for now. “Unless TSMC completes its planned six
Intel Corp has named Tasha Chuang (莊蓓瑜) to lead Intel Taiwan in a bid to reinforce relations between the company and its Taiwanese partners. The appointment of Chuang as general manager for Intel Taiwan takes effect on Thursday, the firm said in a statement yesterday. Chuang is to lead her team in Taiwan to pursue product development and sales growth in an effort to reinforce the company’s ties with its partners and clients, Intel said. Chuang was previously in charge of managing Intel’s ties with leading Taiwanese PC brand Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), which included helping Asustek strengthen its global businesses, the company
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said second-quarter revenue is expected to surpass the first quarter, which rose 30 percent year-on-year to NT$118.92 billion (US$3.71 billion). Revenue this quarter is likely to grow, as US clients have front-loaded orders ahead of US President Donald Trump’s planned tariffs on Taiwanese goods, Delta chairman Ping Cheng (鄭平) said at an earnings conference in Taipei, referring to the 90-day pause in tariff implementation Trump announced on April 9. While situations in the third and fourth quarters remain unclear, “We will not halt our long-term deployments and do not plan to
The New Taiwan dollar and Taiwanese stocks surged on signs that trade tensions between the world’s top two economies might start easing and as US tech earnings boosted the outlook of the nation’s semiconductor exports. The NT dollar strengthened as much as 3.8 percent versus the US dollar to 30.815, the biggest intraday gain since January 2011, closing at NT$31.064. The benchmark TAIEX jumped 2.73 percent to outperform the region’s equity gauges. Outlook for global trade improved after China said it is assessing possible trade talks with the US, providing a boost for the nation’s currency and shares. As the NT dollar
RSS