Shopping is basically a basic thing everyone does, from buying new clothes, items, or just food. Sometimes people are lazy and decide to shop online. Events like Cyber Monday where there are big sales online have a really bad impact on the environment. The carbon footprint for instore shopping is about 1.6 kgCO2e, while the carbon footprint for online shopping is about 1.8 kgCO2e. The reason for this is that you have to use electronics to make the purchase, the company has to ship the purchase to the packaging company, the packaging company has to use machines to package the item, and then the company has to drive a truck to your house and back. This releases much more carbon dioxide than when a person just drives to the store.

I completely agree with your point about online shopping. The boom in online shopping has certainly added to our carbon footprint. Online shopping is very helpful, when it comes to getting specific products and receiving them quickly and in good condition. However, the effects it has on our carbon footprint are massive, so the other option to online shopping is of course: buying things from local stores. Not everything that we need can be found locally, but clothing and household items can be found with effort. (Although the problem of packaging also arises. Whether it's the plastic coming from the bubble wrap covering our online-ordered tech or the plastic bags we get from the grocery store, we need to change that.). This article delves into the bad effects of online shopping, furthering your point that online shopping is negatively affecting the environment (https://www.pressherald.com/2017/12/17/ … footprint/). We can save time and our footprint by going out and buying things ourselves, rather than rely on large corporations an d their mass amounts of factories and trucks/planes/etc... but in the end, carbon dioxide is always being added. We just need to watch which one contributes the most and control it.