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Comment by cjbenedikt | Hacker News Reader

It would be interesting if Amazon would calculate how much CO2 they save because their customers don't drive to the supermarket but order from Amazon. With the data that Amazon certainly has access to, it should be possible to calculate this. Certainly considerable in the US.

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Not quite as simple as that bit of analysis, as:

1. The CO2 of the Amazon delivery needs to be taken into account (apportioned to the number of drops), vs delivery to store. Delivery to stores is highly efficient compared to last mile.

2. Most Amazon purchases probably wouldn't directly result in less trips to the supermarket (i.e. am I driving to the supermarket just to pick up one item, or am I going there anyway and picking up everything I need when I am there?)

Delivery to stores might be more efficient, but then the last mile cost doesn't go away. Most of the stuff that I would buy from Amazon isn't available at the stores that I go to so it would require an entirely separate trip to somewhere that I would not go otherwise. Often multiple stores.

It depends on where your stores are and how frugal the rest of your shopping is. My Trader Joes/Costco (five minutes away) is in an eight block shopping center with Best Buy, Home Depot, and a dozen other big box stores which I think is fairly common in America.

Between that and shopping for fresh meat and produce at ethnic markets that are all over the city, the vast majority of my shopping is amortized over staple groceries that I can’t or won’t buy online.

And in the EU at least, it's not as unfeasible as in most American cities to just do your grocery shopping with a backpack, since there are tons of walkable cities. I go about twice a week, usually when I pass one anyway on the way home, and haven't needed a car for the last fifteen years.

For use cases like this, the last mile is carbon neutral.

Edit: Re-reading my comment, it comes across as if there were no walkable cities in the US. That was not my intention. Of course there are, but from what I've seen, not that many. Also, somehow there is a lot of political opposition to them, because of certain conspiracy theorists who seem to have taken over one of the political parties. And since there are only two worth mentioning, the situation is unlikely to improve.

Meanwhile, I would never dream of ordering groceries outside of specialty items through Amazon. They are prohibitively expensive on most food items that have any sort of weight compared to Walmart and Instacart. Granted, I don't have a Whole Foods nearby.

Personally I don't order food items from Amazon because I worry about their whole counterfeit issues / that they really don't care about that issue.

Just you wait. Order your groceries in the morning. It will be arrived by night from a service called grocery fulfillment and distribution.

Not to beat the drum on urbanization, but I live 2 blocks from my grocery store, so that’s not really putting anything on the table for me.

Different views of the future.

Me too. But coming back with 40 lb of groceries in hand is a chore. And if I can consolidate the list to a 24-hour schedule for one week period, that hammers it out majority of cases where emergency shopping is once in a blue moon.

I have a grocery store literally downstairs, and I sometimes pay someone to deliver bags to me.

Note to self: build great stuff, advertise to ridiculous customers.

Well, it cost me $15 more to deliver food from there. I save roughly an hour of time and do something more interesting instead. Also, not walking through the isles saves me from buying random junk.

Jokes aside, I save money by using grocery delivery.

Instacart already delivers within an hour to my home from a store of my choice. This means in addition to the regular grocery store items, I can get speciality items from the ethnic Indian, Chinese, Korean stores delivered too. With the subscription ($9.99/month) there are no delivery fees either. That’s going to be hard to beat.

> there are no delivery fees either

Careful with that.

The delivery fees may not be explicit, but they definitely charge more for items at some stores, with Costco being one of the more egregious ones.

Are you sure about that? Because if so I would reconsider my use of instacart. We buy a lot of stuff from Costco and it’s a 45 min drive away so we almost never go into the store.

Check out this thread on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Frugal/comments/1cal0ff/comparing_c...

Short answers:

- Yes, they mark up. 24%ish.

- Markup may be different when shopping on IC directly versus Costco same day delivery (via IC).

- Coupons like 50% off orders over $xx changes that math.

- Factor in tip into the equation.

Yes, no delivery fees; merely service fees for the service of delivery.

Yeah but it’s like $2-3, not terrible for the convenience.

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