living the dream
convenience is king
For the last fifty years my family have taken a summer camping holiday near a secluded cove on the Lizard Peninsula. Over the last ten years I have noticed an increase in the number of delivery vans driving around the countryside in this quiet rural area.
Some vans are delivering super market food orders, some dropping off holiday leisure products, but all of them lost and driving around aimlessly searching for a remote rental cottage that no one has heard of. We regularly walk past empty houses with large packages sitting at the front door, waiting for their temporary tenants to arrive.
RWA 169
Accepted to show at the Royal West of England 169th Open show in Bristol in 2022.
Size: 200cm x 120cm
Etched/sprayed/inked recycled printing plates mounted on reused roofing batons.
Originally shown at the Daisy Laing Gallery, Penzance.
£3000 SOLD.
statistic 1: landfill
20% of online purchases end up as landfill because they cannot be resold by the retailer.
amazon
statistic 2: prime culprit
Amazon alone emitted 44.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2019, equivalent to the pollution rate of a small nation.
statistic 3: don’t care
25% of UK consumers do not care about eco-friendly delivery options
e-commerce
Stastic 4: waste
30% of solid waste produced comes from e-commerce packaging
denial
statistic 5: unbeliever
80% of UK consumers do not believe that the rise of ecommerce is an issue for the environment
header
earth.org
‘There is little doubt that the e-commerce revolution has brought enormous advantages.
However, online shopping and its environment impact must not be ignored. Nowadays, most consumers choose convenience over principles. And, as much as companies trying to become more and more sustainable is a good step in the right direction, these changes alone will not entirely solve the problem.
Consumers are the ones that have the last word, and it is their behaviour and their decisions that eventually determine the impact of this industry. Thus, the only way to reverse the dangerous trend that e-commerce has taken, there needs to be a mind shift from both the producer’s as well as the consumer’s side’.