This allowed them to reach across the entire city, without bias toward factors such as demographics and income level. Then, they randomly drew a portion of those households from that data to identify customers and assign them to their closest grocery store. The UW researchers compiled Seattle and King County data, assuming that every household was a possible delivery-service customer. ![]() The research was funded by the Oregon Department of Transportation and published in the Journal of the Transportation Research Forum. “Saving fuel saves money, which also saves on emissions.” “What’s good for the bottom line of the delivery service provider is generally going to be good for the environment, because fuel is such a big contributor to operating costs and greenhouse gas emissions,” Wygonik said. They also discovered significant savings for companies – 80 to 90 percent less carbon dioxide emitted – if they delivered based on routes that clustered customers together, instead of catering to individual household requests for specific delivery times. In their analysis, they found delivery service trucks produced 20 to 75 percent less carbon dioxide than the corresponding personal vehicles driven to and from a grocery store. Goodchild/WygonikĪs companies continue to weigh the costs and benefits of offering a delivery service, Goodchild and Erica Wygonik, a UW doctoral candidate in civil and environmental engineering, looked at whether using a grocery delivery service was better for the environment, with Seattle as a test case. The right side shows a more efficient system whereby the delivery service sets delivery times. The bars on the left represent a system in which customers choose their delivery times. Last month, Google unveiled a shopping delivery service experiment in the San Francisco Bay Area, and UW alumni recently launched the grocery service Geniusdelivery in Seattle.Ī comparison of carbon dioxide produced per customer for personal vehicles and delivery vehicles. FreshDirect delivers to residences and offices in the New York City area. AmazonFresh operates in the Seattle area, while Safeway’s service is offered in many U.S. “From an environmental perspective, grocery delivery services overwhelmingly can provide emissions reductions.”Ĭonsumers have increasingly more grocery delivery services to choose from. “A lot of times people think they have to inconvenience themselves to be greener, and that actually isn’t the case here,” said Anne Goodchild, UW associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. Trucks filled to capacity that deliver to customers clustered in neighborhoods produced the most savings in carbon dioxide emissions. University of Washington engineers have found that using a grocery delivery service can cut carbon dioxide emissions by at least half when compared with individual household trips to the store. This diagram shows how a delivery truck can save on mileage when compared with personal vehicles driving to and from a store.
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