Surprisingly enough, there is a pretty large cooling energy use attributed to on-line shipping, especially for large chains such as Amazon. There is an incredible amount of servers used to host all of the product info, and these servers have to be constantly cooled, 24/7. Even though you would not be going to an air conditioned mall, you would still be visiting an air conditioned web site.

Well it's to seems far more efficient to me to keep the car parked and walk to the store. Carrying my own cloth bag, especially when in cities. It's a good time to take a stroll, relax, look at the world around you and help the environment! No worries about weather a car is more wasteful vs the packaging, eliminating both!

I live in that wonderful town!
Powells and all the other local shops in our area are really fun and neat to shop at! How fun! I'm glad to find more powells lovers and my wonderful towns name! :D

At least, if you do buy online, buy through one of the shopping websites which work with companies to get a percentage, even so small, to your favorite environmental charity.  

Every little bit helps.

I loved the idea!  Turn off all your appliances, turn off your heat and air conditioning, and sponge bathe in mall sinks!  Oh wait... I can't stand malls.  I'll have to stay home with everything turned off or walk to my favorite shopping with my cloth bag- the thrift store.  But I had a fun flashback to Madonna washing her hairy armpits in the sink, then drying them with the electric hand dryer (Desperately Seeking Susan).  Thanks!

Another thing to keep in mind is the fact that when suppliers send bulk shipments to land based stores they go to a distribution center in most cases, where they are sorted and repaletized and shrink wrapped according to where its going. So there is added power/materials that negates the bulk shipping to land based stores. Most of these DC's run 24/7. Ive been to a walmart DC and while amazed at just how many environmental precautions are taken, 1.5 million square feet of machinery and packaging per dc is a pretty big footprint. Just a thought.

Umbra is awesome, every time she could give a poseur answer she doesn't, right on Umbra...

So stop shopping before you kill us or buy from indy places. That Body Shop lady is completely loaded. I'm not anti being loaded I just think she should start giving some of it away now.

I need money. I get fired from jobs on a weekly basis and I'm freelance...lol...

Krista, actually, alonovo.com is powered by Amazon.com where I think Grist is one of the non-profit beneficiaries.

"my personal preference for individual, in-person, small businesses in the living landscape of my city. "

Word. For me, the crucial factor will always be, "What consumption pattern supports the world that I want to live in."  I want to live in a world where I buy things from people who have a face, a family, fears and hopes, art, joy, and tragedy.  

I cannot feel, hear, smell, or otherwise sense a person on the computer screen, so I tend only to do my nasty multinational corporation financing stuff online.

I find its far more enjoyable and less of a stress to go shopping where I see friends behind the counters and have lovely conversations, unlike my mothers stressful, fast passed, long line, grumpy shopping on her lunch break at Costco.

Ew! Bulk shopping where the foods already bad and now you need to eat it in under a week!

Since many of the comments are using buying books as their case study and we are a publisher (South End Press) I started thinking about the different paths from us to you and the impacts of that path.

I'm a bit of a book geek so I thought other people might be interested. Here are the usual paths our books take.

I think this is pretty accurate for most publishers (well except for me biking books to the LPC). So I guess in conclusion, like most hings, the lower you buy on the food chain the lower your impact. Another thing to consider is your shipping method. The more expedited your shipment the more airplanes involved.

A. Shortest path--lowest impact
Books ship from the printer (union printer in Quebec, Canada) to our office in Cambridge, MA
I put some books in my bag and ride to the bookstore where I volunteer
You take the T to the store for an event and buy some books

B. Pretty short path
Books ship to office as in A
You order from our website or by mail
We mail the book to you

C. The independent bookstore path
Books ship to our distributor warehouse in TN
Books shipped to bookstore
You bike to the store to get your book
(fine print: sometimes there is another wholesaler between the distributor and the store)

D. The online bookseller path
Books ship to distributor
Books shipped to online bookseller warehouse
Books shipped to you
(fine print: as in C)

E. The chain bookseller
Books ship to distributor
Books shipped to bookstore warehouse
Books shipped to bookstore
You go to the store and get the book

--alexander--->

After having worked at a chain bookseller, let me revise slightly:

E. The chain bookseller
   1. Books ship to distributor
   2. Books shipped to bookstore warehouse
   3. For each store, the needed stock is assessed and shipped in bulk, i.e. 200 of Book A is shipped to store X.
   4. Book A sells at store X, overstock is assessed if they don't sell as well as predicted (happens often).
   5. Overstock is sent back to warehouse (complete book if a hardcover, for softcovers the cover is torn off and shipped in order to account for all books, and the actual book is destroyed.)
   6. At warehouse, returned books are shipped to new stores if needed, or returned to distributor if overstock exists in all locations.
   7. Not sure what the distributors do with extra books, presumably try to sell them or ship them to new stores.

Chain stores have a bit longer of a "shipment chain" than other types of bookstores.

I work with Yves Rocher and we have both online and instore shopping. The difference with us as far as instore goes is that we only receive shipments once a week to reduce environmental impact, we send back and reuse the bags that our products were shipped in, we sell our own reuseable shopping bags (where money goes to natural conservation in Canada), we use recycled material in packaging (and offer refillable containers on some product), to name just a few things we do to lesson the companies environmental impact. I know my store uses environmelly concious lighting and heating (our mall uses Bullfrog Power).  

The local landscape would determine where you buy as well. I live in a twin-city area of about 300,000 people in Southern California. Los Angeles is 45 miles southwest of my area but I really don't like going there. In my twin-city area, we have 2 bookstores. A Barnes & Noble about 10 miles away and a Waldenbooks (owned by borders) about 3 miles away. Occasionally someone opens a used bookstore but they rarely last and usually only contain romance novels. Almost anytime, I want to get a book it has to be ordered off a website and shipped. Waldensbooks and Barnes and Noble with do this for you or I can do it at home. Our local governments seem to love big boxes though. We have 4 super Walmarts and a 5th is being built. Doubles and Triplicates of any chain out there in the area as well. Just no bookstores.

Sometimes I miss commuting to Glendale for work because along the main street there are a dozen bookstores with everything one could want.

Umbra I love your stuff!
I totally agree with the jury being out.  It seems really hard to account for all the factors.
For instance:
I work in NYC and get stuff shipped to my office.  I'm thinking that since UPS is always driving around the city that my package is technically sharing the same journey with other packages incoming to my office.  It shares the same truck that traverses the city.  All those packages came from the same hub which came from the hub near (insert online company here, i.e. Amazon.) AND I assume "Amazon" is constantly sending a bunch load of packages to the UPS center near it.  So my package is never really alone, is it?  whew!