Online shopping has grown rapidly since Covid-19 broke out, but the carbon cost of getting products to consumers remains high. Could eco-friendly packaging help?
The growth of e-commerce and home deliveries has been a key development in retail over the past decade, but coronavirus has supercharged that trend in a way that was unimaginable even 12 months ago. “We are witnessing digital adoption at unprecedented rates,” says Stephanie Millner, executive vice president of customer experience management at the digital business services provider Teleperformance. “The pandemic has driven a shift in who is using e-commerce, how they are using it, and why. It has transformed those who once refused to download apps into advocates of online grocery shopping.”
The full extent of this shift is now becoming clear. Recent research from the retail and hospitality fintech app Ubamarket, for example, found that 38% of Britons have used online shopping more since lockdown. Similarly, ONS data reveals that the proportion of online sales stood at 27.5% in September compared with 20.1% in February. This increase occurred across all sectors, but is particularly noticeable in the groceries market, with online proportions for food stores almost doubling from 5.4% in February to 10.4% in September.
