E-commerce vs. physical retail—Sustainability depends on logistics, not channels

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Useful synthesis of last-mile logistics decarbonization evidence, highlighting context-dependency of e-commerce vs. retail footprints.

🏢実務担当者:Logistics and sustainability teams can leverage consolidation, micro-hubs, and EV fleet strategies to reduce delivery emissions.

🏛政策担当者:Supports policy design around micro-hubs, access regulation, and fleet electrification for urban freight.

As e-commerce continues to reshape urban consumption patterns, its implications for city logistics and environmental performance have become a central concern for metropolitan policymakers. Empirical evidence from major European cities suggests that the expansion of online retail does not mechanically translate into increased congestion or environmental degradation. In Barcelona, a comprehensive report on European city logistics initiatives highlights the strategic deployment of micro-hubs, parcel collection points, and electric vehicles as effective instruments for mitigating delivery-related externalities in dense urban environments (https://www.lvmt.fr/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Harrisand-Dablanc-European-initiatives-of-urban-logistics-report-20231.pdf, accessed December 29, 2025). These findings are corroborated by large-scale modeling work examining 1,057 micro-hubs integrating cargo bikes and electric vans, which demonstrates substantial reductions in travel distances through algorithmically optimized routing (Castillo et al., 2024). Similarly, research conducted in Amsterdam shows that the integration of waterways with clean-energy vehicles can significantly reduce road traffic volumes (Pourmohammad-Zia and van Koningsveld, 2024). Taken together, these cases indicate that the environmental footprint of e-commerce extends beyond street-level traffic flows, pointing instead to consolidation, route optimization, and multimodal integration as decisive levers for improving the sustainability of urban distribution systems at the metropolitan scale.Since the early 2020s, literature reviews and comparative modeling studies have consistently shown that e-commerce logistics relies on highly shared, automated, and optimized systems, increasingly supported by advanced scheduling and routing tools (Garola et al., 2022). These configurations enable substantial reductions in distance traveled per unit delivered, particularly in peri-urban and low-density contexts where individual shopping trips to physical stores tend to accumulate rapidly. Under optimized conditions, a single delivery vehicle can substitute for dozens of private consumer trips, while ongoing fleet electrification further reduces carbon intensity per delivery. However, technological efficiency alone is insufficient to ensure favorable environmental outcomes. Product return rates, constraints imposed by urban infrastructure, and the diversity of operational practices play a decisive role in shaping overall performance. Klein and Popp (2023) emphasize that the presence of physical retail networks does not guarantee sustainability. Instead, environmental impacts emerge from the interaction of building energy performance, consumer mobility patterns, logistics consolidation strategies, packaging management, and return organization. When delivery operations are effectively pooled and fleets decarbonized, e-commerce supply chains frequently achieve lower carbon footprints than conventional consumer travel, even though such advantages remain underestimated in public discourse (Toebast-Wensink et al., 2025).Reassessing retail sustainability is therefore increasingly urgent, particularly because public policies often continue to rely on intuitive assumptions rather than on systematic empirical evidence. Dense networks of urban brick-and-mortar stores, commonly perceived as environmentally superior, can generate redundant logistical flows that prove less efficient than consolidated e-commerce supply chains. As a result, sustainability debates must move beyond simplistic oppositions that frame ecommerce as inherently detrimental and physical retail as intrinsically virtuous. Long-term environmental performance is more likely to emerge from hybrid systems capable of combining delivery speed, resource efficiency, and advanced logistical coordination. Innovations such as predictive inventory management, algorithmic orchestration of flows, reusable packaging systems, and integrated return logistics illustrate the growing convergence between physical and digital distribution channels. Realizing these efficiencies, however, requires institutional frameworks able to assess logistics holistically rather than privileging a specific retail format. Over the coming decade, a key challenge will be balancing intensified logistics aimed at reducing travel distances with strategies designed to curb overall consumption, including repairability, secondhand markets, and circular reuse loops. Sustainable retail should therefore be evaluated through systemic optimization, fleet efficiency, and operational consolidation rather than through visible consumer mobility alone.The arguments advanced in this Opinion article should be interpreted as context-dependent rather than universal. A substantial body of academic research demonstrates that retail environmental performance depends critically on urban density, consumer behavior-including purchase frequency, willingness to accept delivery delays, and propensity for returns-and regulatory frameworks governing city logistics (Edwards et al., 2010;van Loon et al., 2015). In densely populated areas, pooling the flow significantly reduces kilometers traveled per purchase, whereas in sparsely populated or highly car-dependent regions such benefits may be attenuated or reversed. Moreover, policy instruments promoting microhubs, regulated access to city centers, and fleet electrification play a decisive role in shaping observed outcomes (Dablanc et al., 2017). The European cases discussed here, characterized by high urban density and proactive public intervention, cannot be generalized to other geographic contexts without caution. This context-dependent approach seeks to identify the logistical mechanisms that structure environmental performance rather than establish a normative hierarchy between distribution channels, thereby grounding sustainability assessments in local urban and institutional conditions.Policymakers and business executives increasingly recognize delivery consolidation as one of the most powerful levers for improving the environmental performance of e-commerce. Empirical research by Castillo and Álvarez (2023) and Reiffer et al. (2023) demonstrates that centralized order processing combined with high-density routing substantially lowers the distance required per package while decreasing the number of vehicles needed to serve urban markets. In contrast, fragmented retailer networks operating parallel supply chains struggle to achieve comparable efficiency levels. The growing deployment of micro-hubs and urban consolidation centers has profoundly reshaped last-mile logistics, with these facilities now embedded in municipal strategies aimed at improving delivery energy performance (de Bok et al., 2024). By enabling lean, predictable, and algorithmically optimizable supply chains, consolidation reveals environmental gains that remain invisible when assessment focuses solely on traffic volumes or parcel counts. Advanced route planning and operational coordination further enhance these effects by maximizing vehicle fill rates and minimizing fragmented delivery tours. Through reduced redundancy and improved utilization of logistical assets, such system-level approaches lower both direct emissions and the indirect environmental costs associated with inefficient urban operations. Overall, these findings indicate that sustainable last-mile delivery hinges on holistic logistics optimization rather than on restricting consumer access or imposing channel-specific limitations.The deployment of low-emission fleets further amplifies the environmental potential of consolidated e-commerce logistics. When electric vehicles are integrated into optimized delivery networks, carbon intensity per package declines markedly, even for relatively small shipment volumes. Operational studies show that electric commercial vehicles performing frequent stops over short urban distances achieve particularly strong emission reductions when embedded in coordinated routing systems (https://clean-trucking.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Last-mile-delivery-with-RAP-report-A4-fv856.pdf, accessed July 6, 2025). However, these gains are not automatic. Ultra-fast delivery services with low load factors or excessive speed can erode efficiency, transforming technological advantages into additional CO₂ emissions (Yang et al., 2024). Maintaining favorable environmental outcomes therefore requires careful alignment between commercial objectives and sustainability constraints across last-mile operations (Raj et al., 2024). European market data reveal uneven progress: new fully electric van registrations declined from 7.8% in 2023 to 5.9% in 2024 (https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/indicators/new-registrations-of-electric-vans-in-europe, accessed September 10, 2025), while fully electric light commercial vehicles accounted for only 6% of sales (https://theicct.org/publication/european-market-monitor-cars-vans-2024-feb25/, accessed April 16, 2025). This slow uptake underscores the limits of isolated fleet upgrades and the need for systemic policy interventions.Despite its potential, certain configurations of e-commerce generate environmental impacts that exceed those of physical retail. Ultra-fast delivery models, characterized by extremely short lead times and minimal consolidation, sharply increase emissions per package by multiplying delivery trips and underutilizing vehicles (Buldeo Rai et al., 2019). Fast fashion presents a comparable challenge, with return rates frequently exceeding 40%, thereby amplifying transport, sorting, and reverse logistics operations that negate the benefits of consolidated distribution (Cullinane and Cullinane, 2021). Moreover, some international platforms rely on fragmented and long-distance supply chains with substantial upstream emissions linked to intercontinental transport and dispersed inventory placement (Pålsson et al., 2017). These coun

• openalex https://doi.org/10.3389/frsus.2026.1751386first seen 2026-08-02 18:54:19