A recent research by Logistic Research Centre at Heriot Watt University in Scotland on the impact of shopping online and having items you bought delivered to your home compared with you making a trip to the high street to buy the items yourself found that online shopping is significantly more environment friendly than making your own trip to the supermarket or high street.

The research team compared environment impact in terms of carbon footprint of online and regular shopping for items such as CDs, books, cameras and household goods. It was found that a typical home delivery by courier produced 181g of CO2, however making your own journey by car to the shops produces 4,274g of CO2.
The team looked into other form of transportation shoppers us such as public transport like a bus, it was found that an average shopper who travel by bus produced 1,265g of CO2. The finding was also summarised as follows:  If a consumer drives to the shop and buy fever than 24 small items per trip or travels by bus and buys fewer than 7 items,then home delivery is more environment friendly.

There has been anecdotal evidence that shopping online is more environment friendly than trips to supermarkets or high street. Last year, there was a significant reduction in consumers driving to shop when petrol was extremely, most of them shop online on go to the high street by public transport. Driving to the shops could also be as environment friendly as shopping online if you buy a large number of items so that when carbon footprint it distributed per item bought, it could end up being the same as or even lover than shopping online.