Realistically, shoppers bundle errands together. The marginal effect of buying a book at the mall is small if, as part of the trip, other items are bought or other things are done. Likewise, the marginal impact in the community of a package delivered by FedEx could be seen as the last mile of the delivery from the previous stop on the route. In addition, the social cost of ordering products over the Internet is not zero. Estimates for 1998 of the electricity cost of operating Internet routers, switches, and computers range from 1 percent of total U.S. energy use to an unlikely 8 percent.
Electricity generation is one of the largest national sources of many pollutants.
Further, the manufacture of computers and related equipment consumes substantial amounts of energy and involves significant amounts of toxic materials, although improvements in design, energy efficiency and manufacturing processes are being made. What s more, many e-commerce companies are building their own regional warehouses for storage and expedited transfer of their merchandise to shipping companies. Thus, customers got books, which, incidentally, were shipped at a 40 percent discount, only a few hours after the midnight Friday embargo imposed by the publisher. Press releases from FedEx trumpeted that the deliveries required a dedicated fleet of 100 airplanes and 9000 trucks. The venture set a record for the online provision of goods in volume.