Grantee Research Project Results
2000 Progress Report: Exploring the Environmental Impacts of the E-merging Digital Economy: Towards an Informational Ecology for the Greening of Electronic Commerce
EPA Grant Number: R827582Title: Exploring the Environmental Impacts of the E-merging Digital Economy: Towards an Informational Ecology for the Greening of Electronic Commerce
Investigators: Sui, Daniel Z.
Institution: Texas A & M University
EPA Project Officer: Packard, Benjamin H
Project Period: October 1, 1999 through September 30, 2000
Project Period Covered by this Report: October 1, 1999 through September 30, 2000
Project Amount: $69,777
RFA: Futures: Detecting the Early Signals (1999) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Water , Sustainable and Healthy Communities , Land and Waste Management , Aquatic Ecosystems , Ecological Indicators/Assessment/Restoration
Objective:
This project addresses the identification of the Internet-based electronic commerce (e-commerce) as one of the major driving forces in shaping the emerging digital economy in the United States. The primary objective of this project is to unpack the paradoxical relationship between the digital economy and the environment by addressing key questions that will help society to better understand the present and future roles of e-commerce. The questions that this project will attempt to answer are:- To what extent and under what circumstances is the electronic delivery of goods and services going to substitute, complement, or synergistically integrate with traditional ways of doing business?
- What are the environmental consequences, measured in terms of energy/material consumption and waste production, of using the Internet to deliver information-based products or services?
- What are the environmental consequences, measured in terms of energy/material consumption and waste production, of using the Internet to facilitate the retailing of tangible goods and products?
To answer these somewhat daunting questions, a different approach must be taken by the academic community to better identify and quantify the tangible and intangible factors to which these questions can be answered. The approach taken in this study is one of an informational ecology approach. One advantage of this approach is that a detailed life-cycle analysis (LCA) of e-commerce can be conducted at an organizational level for Internet-based businesses. Therefore, by conducting LCAs on Internet-based businesses allows for a secondary objective to be achieved. This secondary objective will provide the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with recommendations on how to conduct environmental audits for companies engaging in e-commerce.
Progress Summary:
Preliminary research shows that the Internet economy is a double-edged sword with both tremendously positive and negative effects on the environment. The dematerialization, decarbonization, demobilization (referred to as the 3Ds) of society from utilizing e-commerce often are cited as potentially positive for the environment. Many people believe that by moving businesses onto the Internet society in general can consume fewer materials today than they were previously consuming in the past. With an ever-increasing number of Internet users, major product marketing shifts are taking place from a material base to an electronic base, which relates to the dematerialization of society. Shifting to an electronic base marketing system provides a means for society to comprehensively investigate and obtain products through clicks rather than trips to retail stores. This demobilization of society would lead you to believe that society also should be reducing its use of carbon-based products and commodities (decarbonization process).However, as positive as these impacts might be on the environment , a closer look into the subject matter reveals the other side of e-commerce. For every positive impact that e-commerce has on our environment, there are overwhelming negative impacts as well. Staying with the prior example, industries might be shifting towards more environmentally conscious transaction methods, but the resources required to maintain and continue those operations is increasing exponentially. Today's society is bent on speeding up all walks of life to obtain convenience and superiority at the mercy of the environment's resources. As an example, delivery and long-haul trucks are running down the road half empty to get goods and services to consumers and businesses quickly and efficiently. This is inefficient and will become unacceptable in the near future, as our environment's resources continue to be depleted into nonexistence.
Therefore, it is the objective of this project to identify and quantify the extent to which businesses and society are now and will contribute in the future to the demise of the environment through e-commerce and the Internet. To better quantify the impacts of e-commerce on our environment, an examination from a business perspective will be taken to explain how business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumers (B2C) transactions are contributing to the environment's deterioration. The results from this examination will hopefully give birth to recommendations on how environmental policies can be instituted to prevent further environmental degradation and to create synergies between and within business processes. To date, such companies as Ericsson Inc., Ford Motor Company, Pitney Bowes Inc., and United Parcel Service have been contacted to participate in this project. To obtain the information needed, a preliminary questionnaire has been constructed to target this information. The types of questions range from a cost basis from conducting business online rather than traditional business methods to how companies package their products and deliver them to customers.
Future Activities:
The future activities of this project are related to refining the company interview questionnaire to target the specific issues of interest that will shed more light on e-commerce's present and future role in our society and how it will impact our environment. Additional companies will be contacted and added to the list of participants in the project. Companies that appear to be critical in obtaining participation are companies who have extensive experience relating to e-commerce and the companies who are beginning to provide services and goods over the Internet. By targeting many companies in varying industries, this project's aim is to establish a panoramic view inside these companies who engage in e-commerce related transactions and how they foresee the future.Journal Articles on this Report : 1 Displayed | Download in RIS Format
Other project views: | All 17 publications | 3 publications in selected types | All 1 journal articles |
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Type | Citation | ||
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Sui DZ, Rejeski DW. Environmental impacts of the emerging digital economy: the e-for-environment e-commerce? Environmental Management 2002;29(2):155-163. |
R827582 (2000) |
Exit |
Supplemental Keywords:
digital economy, e-commerce, environmental impacts, environmental policies, information ecology, business-to-business transactions, business-to-consumer transactions., RFA, Scientific Discipline, Ecosystem Protection/Environmental Exposure & Risk, Economics and Business, Ecology and Ecosystems, Futures, Exp. Research/future, Social Science, emerging environmental problems, electronic commerce, socio-economic changes, information ecology, environmental policy, exploratory research, energy consumption, environmental regulations, information technology, digital economy, public policyProgress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.