E-commerce and environmental sustainability; Making e-commerce more environmentally sustainable requires collaborative efforts, focussing on sourcing, logistics, packaging as well as consumption behaviour

While the preceding chapters focused on the three phases of the life cycle of digitalization, this chapter discusses a specifc application of digital technologies, namely e-commerce. Attention is turned to the indirect implications of digitalization on the environment, which can be both positive and negative. As stressed in chapter I, assessing these indirect effects is even more challenging than measuring the direct environmental footprint of digitalization. This chapter has a particular focus on business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce, and explores how it can be as sustainable as possible.
A. Introduction Digitalization has had a major impact on domestic and international commerce. Boosted by the COVID-19 pandemic, more people and businesses are going online to look for the goods [...]