Inconvenient Truth: How Impulse Buying is Selling Out Sustainability Goals

In a world teeming with green hashtags and sustainable choices, the irony is striking: India’s educated, urban elite, led by its shopping-happy Gen Z, is clicking its way to a consumerist high that’s anything but eco-friendly. 

The name of this modern-day passion? Impulse buying:  an overpowering, irresistible urge marked by a persistent desire to buy something right away. If that sounds all too common, it is because that’s precisely what it is.

Driven by cash, convenience and craving, an estimated 250,000 Indians hit the “buy now” button every minute at just Amazon and Flipkart during their “mega-sale” jamborees like the Great Indian Festival and Big Billion Days.

However, unknown to most of them, such greed-driven shopping sprees aren’t just flooding countless carts — they are overflowing into landfills, choking oceans, and turning up the planet’s heat. And how? According to a report by Clean Mobility Collective (CMC) and Stand Earth Research Group (SRG), the Indian e-commerce market is on the brink of explosive growth—projected to soar from 400 crore parcels now to 4000 crore parcels by 2030.

With this ten-fold growth, India’s e-commerce marketplace is expected to spew as much as 8 million tons of CO2 by 2030 — equivalent to the annual emissions from 1.6 million petrol cars or 20 gas-fired power plants.

In the first week of 2023 online festive sales, Gross Merchandise Value (GMV — the total value of goods sold before returns or cancellations) shot up to an eye-popping Rs 47,000 crores, propelled by easy financing and the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) factor that online platforms create with inducements like pre-book and price-lock, says a report by Redseer Strategy Consultants.

"E-commerce players design their platforms to create a sense of urgency among consumers," says Dr Sonam Mahajan, former Brand Management professor and owner of a branding consultancy. The strategy is underpinned by a basic economic principle: human wants are unlimited and can be easily stirred with the right triggers. FOMO is a favourite weapon in their GMV-driven arsenal. “Additionally, these e-tailers keep pushing notifications, egging customers on to buy things that are not really needed at that moment.”

Says Dr Mahajan, “This unhealthy fuels overconsumption and increases our carbon footprint.”

What Happens After You Click "Buy Now"

The environmental toll of impulse buying is invisible to most consumers.  But here is the fact. Every order kicks off an inherently polluting supply chain, running through manufacturing, warehousing, packaging and transportation – often by aeroplanes for the long hauls and all manner of vehicles for the last mile. A 2018 University of California study found that fast shipping leaves a heavier carbon footprint than standard delivery. Supporting this, a 2020 research report based on a case study from Mexico said that express shipping leads to a 15% increase in CO2 emissions over regular deliveries.

"Express delivery systems have a significantly higher carbon footprint," notes Siddharth Sreenivas, India Coordinator at Clean Mobility Collective. The fact that many quick commerce and e-commerce companies have switched to EVs for deliveries has mitigated the issue–– but only to a limited extent. “Most emissions in the e-commerce sector are due to air freight, and so it is a huge concern. In quick commerce, individual parcel deliveries are the cause of emissions,” notes Sreenivas.

Packaging: A Growing Waste Problem

In addition to the vehicular emissions caused by fast deliveries, the surge in e-commerce, often driven by impulse purchases, contributes significantly to packaging waste, including bubble wrap, plastic air pillows, and multi-layered cardboard boxes, which are not always environmentally friendly. As per the Stockholm Convention, the chemical additives in certain packaging plastic are toxic, including persistent organic pollutants (POPs) that have detrimental environmental as well as health impacts.

The e-commerce industry in India produced around 98,000 tonnes of packaging plastic waste in 2021, 73% more than in 2020. Since plastic trash is rarely collected separately at the source in India, it ends up in an unholy mix with all other solid waste, stripping it of its resale value and making it hard to recycle.  

"Most Indian cities lack adequate infrastructure for segregating and recycling packaging waste generated by e-commerce platforms," says Anjesh Kumar, a waste management expert at DCC Green Energy. "This is because the producer is often not linked properly with the waste collector or rag pickers, despite the extended producer responsibility (EPR) guidelines,” he points out.

The Cost of Returns and Overproduction

If anything worsens the impact on the environment than impulse buying, then it is the ease of returning products on these e-commerce sites. A senior executive at Amazon, who does not want to be quoted given the context of this story, says that 20 out of every 100 products bought are returned by customers across online platforms, and not always for good reasons.  “In an unfortunate trend, many customers buy items for one-time use and then initiate returns,” he says. While the easy-return feature empowers customers, it significantly increases the carbon impact of each transaction as it rides on reverse logistics services such as courier pickups. 

As per a 2022 study by a reverse logistics technology company, Optoro, up to 24 million metric tonnes of CO2 emissions can be attributed to industry-wide e-commerce returns in a year.

“The culture of returns contributes substantially to transport emissions,” says Sreenivas. “While I don’t have India-specific data, research from MIT’s Real Estate Lab suggests that nearly 25% of transport emissions in e-commerce are driven by product returns. That’s a significant and often overlooked environmental cost,” he points out. Worse, only a fraction of the returned orders are resold; the rest find their way to landfills or are incinerated, harming the environment in multiple ways.

Further, to fulfil impulse purchases, e-commerce companies must gear up for fast deliveries, leading to overproduction and colossal wastage of resources. 

What Next?

The unchecked trend of impulse disguised as convenience is contributing significantly to environmental degradation at a growing cost. Experts say even small changes in consumer behaviour can help. “Opting for standard shipping options and resisting the urge to binge during flash sales can help,” says Dr Mahajan. Additionally, she notes, “Our simple old habit of stepping out to buy essentials or groceries can also significantly contribute to a reduced carbon footprint.”

However, the responsibility rests primarily with e-commerce platforms. Companies must give thought to how they may reshape the purchasing habits of their customers without affecting their profits.

Says Dr Mahajan, “These brands need to take responsibility and recognise that they cannot operate with only GMV targets in mind as such an approach is not only harmful to the environment but is ultimately counterproductive to their businesses in the long run.” Convenience has a cost—and it's time we stopped letting the planet pay for our split-second whims fulfilled at the tap of a finger.