Online groceries: The green way to shop

Online grocery shopping has a bad rep here in Canada, with many consumers thinking of it as the “lazy” solution.

But new research out of the University of Washington proves it’s actually the environmentally friendly solution.

Researchers compared the amount of carbon dioxide produced per customer for personal vehicles and delivery trucks.

The results: Delivery service trucks produced 20 to 75 per cent less carbon dioxide than “the corresponding personal vehicles driven to and from a grocery store.”

Better still, if the grocer used routes that clustered customers together (i.e., delivered the groceries to one particular neighbourhood on one trip, rather than driving to and from the neighbourhood for individual trips), the carbon dioxide emission savings were even better.

Read the full study here.