Opinion | New Yorkers Need To Quit Shopping Online

For a while, the pandemic was a valid excuse for buying online. To avoid spreading the virus, housebound Americans inflamed their long-growing dependency on e-commerce, with online sales increasing by 43 percent from 2019 to 2020. Now New York, like everywhere else, has moved on from social distancing: Subway ridership is up and mostly unmasked, and tourism’s certainly back. But our retail sector’s recovery lags the nation’s. New Yorkers — though largely stuck in small apartments you’d think they’d love to escape — have become too accustomed to the convenience of sedentary buying. Online shopping remains the default.

The Manhattan borough president, Mark Levine, put out a report last fall about the delivery surge, which “exacerbates congestion, road safety issues, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, package waste and a variety of other quality-of-life concerns in Manhattan and throughout the city.” The main problem here is last mile delivery, the last step in the journey a package takes from a warehouse to a customer’s doorstep.

It’s that last mile that stuffs the streets with carriers’ trucks, vans and motorbikes, all of which dose the air with carbon dioxide, with large delivery vehicles contributing the most dangerous particulate matter. They worsen already high concentrations of traffic-related pollution in poor neighborhoods, which suffer the most. The trucks often park on sidewalks and in bike lanes or simply double park, plugging up traffic, which means that not only are pedestrians and cyclists inconvenienced or put in danger but also all vehicles must stay on the road longer, spitting fumes. If business continues as usual, the World Economic Forum predicts, emissions from delivery traffic in the world’s 100 largest cities will rise 32 percent from 2020 levels by 2030, and traffic congestion will increase by more than 21 percent.

The next big thing in New York delivery is the extra-large commercial cargo bike. These are electric bicycles attached to metal storage containers, just bigger than your average golf cart, which overexcited city officials may give the go-ahead to perch on sidewalks, the rationale being that e-bikes are better than cars. I agree. But you know what’s better than e-bikes? Cutting back on the more than 12 million packages delivered every week.

A package enjoying its last mile on an e-bike doesn’t mean it hasn’t been made from plastic in another country, flown or shipped to this one using oil or coal and packaged in a plastic envelope or cardboard box. Waste abounds. (Even if recyclable, this material rarely finds new life.) If we want to do better for the environment, we should not be taking steps to enable more e-commerce but instead be considering how much we could help ourselves by not buying online.