Perrine Tanguy: Let's avoid deepening the ecological impact of e-commerce
The French have become accustomed to doing part of their shopping online: whether it's buying clothes or booking a hotel, consumers interact with dozens of pages each day. However, it remains difficult to assess the carbon footprint of a purchase on the web...
Perrine Tanguy, founder of the E-CO collective, talks to us about the ecological consequences of online shopping.
You are currently an e-commerce consultant and the founder of the E-CO collective. Why did you create this association?
I studied e-commerce before working for ready-to-wear brands. My role was to encourage users to visit the site and make purchases. In e-commerce, this is called traffic acquisition.
Needing to align my personal values with my professional activities, I started to take an interest in responsible digital practices and became a volunteer with the Green IT collective in 2019. However, at that time, there was little information about responsible e-commerce, which combines ecological and economic challenges.
In 2020, I launched a call, and that’s how the E-CO collective was born. Today, it brings together 15 people. Our initial workshops led us to write a white paper that highlights the impacts of e-commerce. We list the challenges of various e-commerce professions and provide ideas for alternative best practices to promote a more sustainable online commerce.
The main mission of the collective is to raise awareness among e-commerce stakeholders about impacts and then provide a list of best practices. The idea is to point out the greenwashing effects of major brands and highlight actions with a genuine sustainable purpose.
Reducing impacts related to e-commerce professions is a first step. The ultimate action is to question the economic model itself, to move towards more virtuous systems such as the economy of functionality and cooperation. These best practices can be a first step towards a broader vision (to address issues related to the economy and ecology... and not just the company’s perspective).
When we talk about e-commerce, we tend to picture the purchase of a product arriving in our mailbox. Is it reductive to simplify it this way?
It's important to understand that e-commerce encompasses all kinds of transactions: not only the sale of goods but also services. When you book a train ticket online, you're renting a seat for a journey. When you purchase a license to use software, you're accessing a service. Whenever you make a transaction or purchase online, you're participating in e-commerce.
What causes the most pollution when making an online purchase?
When e-merchants conduct life cycle analyses, they find that 80% of the impact of their activity comes from the product’s manufacturing. The remaining 20% is related to transportation, logistics, marketing actions, the site itself, etc.
According to data from Frédéric Bordage, expert in responsible digital practices and founder of the Green IT collective, for an online purchase, an e-consumer visits an average of 15 pages. In 2019 (pre-COVID), if we exclude transportation and only consider the energy consumed by networks and data centers, 1.5 billion transactions conducted on the Internet in France emitted 9,900 tons of greenhouse gases. That’s equivalent to 1,347 trips around the world by car!
In 2023, French e-commerce represented 2.35 billion transactions. We’ll let you do the math… Given these figures, we regret that no organization has decided to conduct a public study on the carbon footprint or life cycle analysis of e-commerce.
You mentioned earlier the issue of greenwashing. On what elements do e-commerce brands tend to engage in greenwashing?
There can be different forms of greenwashing. In terms of communication, some brands claim to be inclusive but do not offer inclusive products.
Today, some major e-commerce players are starting to offer second-hand or rental options. In itself, the idea is good... but there are rebound effects. For example, second-hand items can lead to overconsumption. If after one or two rentals, a new product enters the second-hand cycle, it can have an ecological impact as significant (or even greater) as if it had just been manufactured, due to all the transportation involved. Therefore, the rental circuit is not necessarily much more sustainable than a purchase.
The collective is also here to differentiate actions in e-commerce with a genuine sustainable purpose from greenwashing claims on social issues. We need to add nuance to so-called responsible actions: are they truly responsible, or do they just appear to be? How do I communicate with my clients (informing them about my actions or using it as a sales argument)? Conversely, some e-merchants do very well... but remain very timid on this subject.
Regarding traffic, alternative models to Google Analytics are less precise in determining consumer behavior. How can we reassure e-merchants about this aspect?
Currently, Google Analytics is still not compliant with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). If we want to comply, there will be a loss of data in addition to what we might lose when users refuse the cookie banner.
First of all, I ask my clients what they do with data once it is collected. I also ask them to consider the following questions: do I use it for my analysis? Are my choices guided by these analyses to generate more sales? If not, collecting data is pointless. If collecting visit, transaction, and revenue data is enough, we might not need more.
It is indeed difficult to do without Google Analytics. With GDPR, web analytics platforms now provide trends but not very objectively. Google Analytics favors sales statistics from Google Ads, while other tools might show that social media or newsletters are effective. By choosing Google Analytics, I must be aware that this tool is not neutral. A lack of impartiality in the tool can influence my budget and choice towards one channel rather than another.
References:
- E-Co - For an E-Commerce Concerned with People and the Environment
- Capital - Pollution: The Calamitous Record of Online Sales
[Cover photo: Nik]
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