Your Amazon Footprint

So you've just discovered a great new album on Amazon by Manu Chao and you want the CD. Or some other physical medium that isn't on the verge of extinction. You could buy it new, but the list of used copies is so large, and the competition so intense, that you can get it at a bargain, even when you take shipping costs into account. What are you most likely to do?

1. Buy it new anyway. You can't trust private sellers.
2. Buy the absolute cheapest used copy. It costs less than a cup of coffee!
3. Buy the cheapest one that satisfies a minimum standard of user rating and product condition.
4. Other

I used to opt for #3 until I started to pay attention to the seller's location. I began to face choices between ordering from a seller in my own state, or ordering from the opposite corner of the country to save 15 cents.

It felt wrong, although the magnitude of the difference wasn't easy to visualise, especially because the shipping cost is the same. It would be nice if Amazon presented the transportation's impact alongside the seller's location. Perhaps then you would go for option #4. Until they do, I ran my own calculations.

A modern tractor-trailer truck that will carry your package does an average of 6 mpg. The distance between the two US coasts is about 2,800 miles (4,500 km). That's 467 gallons of fuel. Assuming a local seller is no more than 200 miles away from you, a truck of the same size would consume only 33 gallons of fuel. The difference is enough to fill up your car's tank 31 times, which would cost about $1,300. Your car could travel 13,000 miles on it. You could cross the US or Europe 4 times.

Granted, the truck isn't just carrying your package, but nonetheless you are consuming 14 times more fuel under similar package load conditions. To save 15 cents. Think about that next time you buy something used on Amazon.