The Prime Effect: How Amazon Has Us Hooked on Convenience

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Commons Team

July 9, 2024

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Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, our use of Amazon has skyrocketed. Amazon has become the poster child for convenience culture, but the time we save for the sake of convenience is putting us in financial and carbon debt.
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In this episode, we're grappling with our fraught relationship with our Amazon Prime subscriptions and getting practical tips to break free from convenience culture and start shopping more sustainably.
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On this episode, you'll hear:

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Listeners share their complex, conflicted feelings about using Amazon.
MIT research scientist Erez Yoeli shares how we can have a more sustainable relationship with Amazon and how to close the action vs intent gap.
How Amazon gets you to buy so much stuff and how its fast-paced shipping comes at the cost of workers' health and pay.

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Find Second Nature wherever you listen to podcasts: Spotify | Apple Podcasts

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Here are some of the people you'll hear from in this episode:

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Citations and further reading

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Episode credits

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Listener contributions: Daria Panova, Diana Holguin, Freya Dumasia, Karen Jean and Rachel Martinson, Katee Hui, Kimberly Foley, Lawrence Hott, Miriam Jornet, Nicole Collins, Rozalia Agioutanti‍
Featuring: Erez Yoeli and Sanchali Seth Pal‍
Editing and engineer: Evan Goodchild‍
Hosting and production: Katelan Cunningham

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Full Transcript

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Katelan (00:00):

Hey, there you are listening to Second Nature. This is a podcast from Commons where we talk to people about how they're living sustainably in an unsustainable world. I really hate to pull a back in my day, but indulge me for a second. Back in my day in the nineties and early OTTs, let's say you needed a new pair of socks, you'd probably just wait until the next time you were out running errands. Then you'd swing by the nearest all-purpose big box store and get a pair of socks. And depending on how close you were to your nearest target or Walmart and how many other things you had to buy, the whole thing could take you from 30 minutes to, I don't know, an hour or so.

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Katelan (00:42):

But nowadays, if you need a new pair of socks, a lot of us start our search online. And anytime you're buying anything online, you're sure to find an Amazon product listing toward the top of your Google search. When you buy socks on Amazon, you may get them the next day, which is notably longer than a run to the store. But the upside is, as we all know, Amazon is super convenient, dangerously convenient with a few taps in a few minutes, you've ordered your socks. And the Amazon employees and maybe the robots, they, they take it from there. But one pair of socks is not the problem. Here we are defaulting to the convenience of Amazon so much that we're spending extra money buying stuff we don't need, and having a detrimental impact on the environment, probably without even realizing it. So how do we deprogram ourselves from prioritizing speed and cost over people in the planet? Can we slow down our buying habits in a world that continues to move faster and faster? I'm your host, Kaitlyn Cunningham, and this episode of Second Nature is all about convenience, culture, and its poster child Amazon. Today we're facing our complicated relationship with Amazon head on and hearing from listeners who are struggling with how to balance convenience with conscious consumerism, we're gonna hear from MIT Research scientist Ezio about how we can break the convenience culture cycle and close the gap between our actions and our intentions. And we're talking to St. Charlie, St. Paul who's gonna help us understand the collective carbon impact of our Amazon Prime subscriptions. Let's get into it.

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Katelan (02:22):

You probably know that sound. It's the sound of ripping through the tape on a box. It could be any box, but statistically speaking, it's probably an Amazon box. Amazon has permeated our lives so much, at least here in the US, that it's hard to imagine life before it. In the US in 20 22, 98 0.2 million households received deliveries from Amazon. That's over 76% of households still. I was truly shocked to find out how much our Amazon purchases have gone up in just the past few years. Last year, Amazon shipped 5.9 billion packages in the US making them the second biggest parcel carrier after the US Postal Service. That's nearly three times more packages than they were shipping in 2019. So when did Amazon start seeing a spike in orders? Well, it was in 2020 during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. But in the years after the pandemic, our reliance on Amazon didn't go back to pre pandemic levels.

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Katelan (03:23):

In fact, Amazon is shipping more and more packages every year, and they're doing it faster and faster. In the first quarter of this year, Amazon reported that nearly 60% of prime orders arrive at the same day or the next day in the top 60 US metro areas. And most of those orders, 89% of them include just one to two items. These two factors, speed and package size tell a compelling story of convenience culture. We're not only ordering more from Amazon than ever and getting our stuff faster than ever, but we're ordering in this kind of shortsighted way. Amazon used to have a $25 minimum for free shipping, but with a prime subscription, you can decide that you need $5 socks and you need them Now. You won't get it now, but probably in the next day or two. Convenience culture is a climate issue because it requires more vehicles, packaging, and warehouses to get our things to us faster.

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The Prime Effect: Listener Montage

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Katelan (04:16):

And when it's so easy to buy, we buy a lot of stuff we don't need, and a lot of it ends up in landfills. Sure, there are some things you do need quickly, and eliminating convenience. Culture doesn't inherently eliminate Amazon. But if we collectively change our relationship with Amazon and convenience culture at large, it could lead to less trucks on the road, less warehouses and less emissions. On top of that, a shift from convenience culture can empower us to move our money away from Amazon and back into our local communities. And look, I'll be the first one to admit that it's hard not to default to Amazon. I'll go through a couple months where I'm Amazon free, and then I'll need to rush ship supplements for my dog. Or I'll wanna buy a specific storage container and a specific size, and all of a sudden I'm finding reasons to buy anything on Amazon for like the next month or two. So how can I say I care about sustainability when my recycling bin is full of Amazon boxes? For better or for worse, I know I'm not the only one who's in this complicated relationship with Amazon,

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Nicole (05:18):

The wonderful company Amazon,

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Diana (05:24):

I haven't. Okay, that's not true. I purchased one thing from Amazon since November of last year. It's just so convenient, but that's part of the problem. It's too convenient. My husband's he'll buy shoes, but instead of just buying one pair, he'll order four pairs from Amazon to try them all on. And I'm just like, oh my God.

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Rozalia (05:48):

Like I personally still use Amazon a lot. It's so convenient and I hate for doing that. And at the same time, I try not to judge myself and also compliment that with other options, which I do. I really do. I do try to support small businesses so much, and then there's some other times that I choose to put my own comfort on top of it.

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Kim (06:09):

So I'm also working on not buying from Amazon.

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Larry (06:13):

Just the ease of shopping on Amazon started to get to me. I felt like I was hooked in, like I had an Amazon habit, and then I started learning what happens to returns and they really aren't sold again, and they just pile up and then they go to second sellers or they get thrown away. I haven't cut down to the habit completely 'cause there's things I want that I can't find anywhere else. I sort of go back and forth between my driving to the store to buy something versus the truck coming to my house. So it's very confusing about what's the best thing to do when I'm shopping.

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Speaker 7 (06:42):

I'm not perfect, you know, I still sometimes order things from Amazon, you know, like, but every time I'm like, I'm kind of conscious of it, it's no longer just this, this unconscious moving through the world. You know?

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Freya (06:54):

I just think, you know, the richest man in the world doesn't need more of my money.

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Miriam (06:58):

The global North tends to overbuy everything at any time of the year and at an incredible level of convenience, all the deliver to your doorstep within just one click. But that's so called convenience for you this day or this week is extremely convenient for this month, this year, or in the next years globally.

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Diana (07:19):

I know I've read that half the things that you return to Amazon don't go back into rotation. They just, they just get thrown out. And that just seems so crazy to me that for our momentary convenience, like there's such a huge impact in the waste. Nobody thinks about where all this waste goes, or a lot of people don't think about where it goes and it just, it's just mind blowing that the system has it. So we just live our lives, especially here in the States. It's just so convenient, so easy. And it's just like we are not directly seeing the impacts of the actions that we take. It's people in other countries where all our waste is shipped or the pollution in the oceans and just, I mean, everything, it, everything, it's, it's a lot. Ah,

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Interview with Erez Yoeli, MIT research scientist

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Katelan (08:14):

Amazon works fast, but the company can't keep up its pace of work in a responsible way. In the past several years, Amazon has faced a lot of labor allegations, including wage theft, dangerous and illegal labor practices and union busting. In fact, earlier this year, Amazon was fined nearly $6 million for 59,000 labor violations across just two Southern California facilities. A lot of us are caught in this tricky spot where we don't wanna shop on Amazon, but we want the convenience that it offers. Reckoning with our reliance on Amazon means reckoning with our reliance on convenience. I wanted to unpack and unravel this a little bit more. So I, I called up Ezio, he's an MIT research scientist who's focused a lot of his work on altruism human behavior and how to get people to buy better. Hi Erez, thanks for coming on the show.

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Erez (09:08):

Hey, thank you for having me.

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Katelan (09:09):

So at Commons, we think a lot about how we can make the sustainable option the easiest option. And sometimes it's the easiest choice, but it's not always like hang drying your laundry takes a few extra minutes, but you get a lot of, you know, you save a lot of carbon, you save microplastics. And so you'd think with all those benefits that everyone in the US would be air drying their laundry, but they're not. And so I guess my question is, do you think that we avoid the slower, more sustainable habits or purchases because we don't know that they're the most sustainable? Or are we just always gonna pick the most convenient thing no matter what?

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Erez (09:43):

I think there's a mix, and I think it depends on the person. Many people don't know that hang drying is actually much more sustainable. Some people, if you kind of force 'em to think about the topic, might guess that some people might know it, some people might kind of figure it out. Many people haven't thought about it. And so to some extent you have kind of two things. One is that they don't know, but the other is that they actually kinda lack of motivation to know, hmm, why do I really need to know that hang drying is better? Like, it's just kind of normal to use a dryer. In fact, it's kind of weird to have your dirty laundry hanging out in the, in the public. In in, in the US it's pretty common. In Europe, it's pretty common in where I'm originally from in Israel, but mm-hmm, <affirmative> in the US that's kind of unusual. So they're just kind of do the normal thing and, and not seek to be very different from that. So we kind of need to give them a reason to wanna find out in the first place.

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Katelan (10:30):

Hmm, interesting. So you actually have a TED talk titled How to Motivate People to Do Good for Others. And in it you had this line, we've got the solution. The problem is people, so in the spirit of motivating people to do good, one of the steps that you gave is to eliminate excuses. So I'm wondering how can we eliminate excuses for ourselves when we want to not spend that, those, those extra minutes hang dry or when we want to use Amazon and do this two day shipping, how can we motivate ourselves to not do that?

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Erez (11:00):

I think it's a really tough problem because fundamentally there just are a lot of excuses in place. We're busy. Amazon makes it very easy. There's always kind of something that can come up to make it so that not choosing the convenient option and choosing the sustainable option might not be the priority right now. Hmm. And so when you are presented with situations that legitimately have many excuses, if you're kind of artificially trying to take those excuses away, that often isn't all that compelling. But that said, we can do it to some extent. There's kind of these behavioral tricks that people do use to sometimes do that. So for instance, a trick I've heard is friends of mine, a handful of them don't have Amazon on their phone. This forces them to remember the thing that they really needed or to write it down and to go to their computer and actually order it from Amazon there in a more deliberate fashion.

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Erez (11:50):

Another example, one that I use is I actually have, I keep a list of it's called I Want. And the I want list is where I put everything that I want to buy. And it can be on a whim, it can be something that I really legitimately need, but there's this kind of step where stuff has to end up on that list. And if it stays on that list long enough and I'm reviewing that list, I'm like, yeah, I still really want that thing. Then at that point I go ahead and purchase it. What these kinds of tricks do is they force somebody to be more deliberate about purchases, and that is slightly less convenient, but not much less convenient, and that you are putting some sort of pause and you do have one extra step in terms of going to buy something.

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Erez (12:33):

But it's still the case that Amazon will deliver it to you easily. And you know, you're still even using Amazon and so on. And so you're not having to like drive out of your way or only buy on certain days of the month or something like that, which would be substantially more inconvenient, perhaps effective, but more inconvenient. But it's still somewhat effective in that it kind of puts the brakes on purchasing things that you don't need as much. So at least some category of your consumption is going to shrink by forcing you to rethink it at least like a second time.

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Katelan (13:00):

I like that trick. I feel like a lot of just avoiding convenience culture and, and avoiding overconsumption is just slowing down in general. <Laugh>, like that's kind of what it comes down to,

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Erez (13:11):

Right? We have these impulses that are like, oh, ah, that would be nice, or, oh, I like that, or that could help me solve this problem. And those impulses have some truth to them almost always. In today's world, it's so easy to act on those impulses. Maybe historically it wasn't as easy and that's perhaps, you know, part of how we got here or maybe in general just there's pros to making things easier and cons. And one of the cons is that it's maybe a little too easy to act on that kind of impulse. And ultimately you end up with a house where an enormous amount of the stuff in there is actually not getting a very high intensity use. And then you have to go and marry condo your house.

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Katelan (13:46):

Yes, I have done that before <laugh> a couple times. A very common excuse is that we're busy, right? Which is true. I think a lot of people are busy and so sometimes we really do need that two day shipping, but sometimes we don't. And it seems like busy culture kind of feeds convenience culture and vice versa. And I'm kind of wondering like, how do we break free from that cycle? How do we rely less on convenience? How do we force ourselves to kind of find the time to slow down so we don't feel the need to get everything in two days?

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Erez (14:15):

It's a really good question because being busy is often a sign that you have a lot of cool stuff to do. <Laugh>, you hear the advice to people slow down and it's sometimes very good advice. I'm not saying it's never good advice, but there is almost always built into that advice slow down by giving up on something that you actually care about. Yeah. And for some people that's a luxury that they can afford to do and may make sense for them. For some people it may not even be affordable for somebody who's very busy because they're holding down three jobs because they're a single parent maintaining a, a family I'm not in the business of telling 'em to slow

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Katelan (14:49):

Down. Exactly.

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Erez (14:50):

For those of us who can afford to, there is a question of whether you want to, and typically it, it does mean giving something up. And so something that I would kind of ask in, in response, not hearing that somebody was giving the advice slow down as a means of motivating people to be less reliant on say, convenience culture or maybe for a a, a number of other reasons. They would ask, well, what is this person giving up by, by slowing down? Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>. And is that something that's good or or bad overall? Is this a worthwhile change? And, and so I would first ask, should you slow down? For instance, if you're somebody who's working on sustainability problems at a company like Commons <laugh>, could you slow down? Yeah. I kind of want you guys not to slow down. I kind of want you guys to be pretty busy and and to like be, be having a huge impact.

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Erez (15:37):

Yeah. Yeah. I think the world probably benefits from that. And so maybe I'm not in such a hurry to tell you guys to slow down <laugh>. So, so that's an example of a situation where, where I might be more hesitant to use that solution and instead might say, instead of slowing down, try to carve out space that is slower. There's naturally in your weak some space that might be a good fit for you to be thinking in like a different space where you can make these kinds of decisions in a slower way and use other kinds of tricks like the ones we were just talking about, maybe other kinds of tricks in order to force yourself into that mindset once in a while and then try to, to corral decisions around purchasing into that mindset. Hmm. So that, that might be how I would approach the problem instead of just recommending in general, people slow down, which seems like it's not always the right advice.

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Katelan (16:22):

I really like that. So almost kind of saying like, once a week I'm gonna sit down and kind of like think through what the things are that I need and I'm in this mind space that's a little bit different. It's not Wednesday night. I'm not trying to like order dinner and do a thousand other things at the same time. I'm, this is what I'm focused on.

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Erez (16:37):

Yeah. Yeah. Or stuff, A cup of tea, <laugh> chill out. You you used to watch an episode of whatever, but instead like spend some time thinking over, it's almost like in tech they have these Monday morning scrums and you like talk about what are we gonna accomplish this week? It's almost like course have a cup of tea, have a have a self scrum and think through like, what is my week gonna look like from a logistical standpoint, including things like, what am I gonna purchase? And if you can do that, that that seems like it's going to change the nature of buying things a little bit for you in a way that's probably productive, constructive, and, and will lead to more sustainable choices.

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Katelan (17:13):

A lot of our, our listeners kind of like ask questions about how can I get people in my family to do X whatever the thing is, plant-based eating, ditching Amazon, that kind of thing. I wonder if in your research how you've seen, I don't know, like how you've seen peers or community help to influence or motivate better behavior.

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Erez (17:34):

I do. We, in fact, we're gearing up to write a book on topic that's like this. So basically the question, how do you motivate people to do good for others? And the idea is for somebody to be able to pick up that book who is just a, a regular old individual and not necessarily a CEO or celebrity. And, and for them to be able to have an impact. Also, we tend to advise kind of three sets of behaviors. But I think even before you would pick up this book and try these behaviors, which I'll describe to you in a second, yeah. I think you would wanna start by thinking through and maybe even a conversation with the person, depending on the relationship. What is the ask? What are you actually gonna ask of this person? Okay. And you, you kind of wanna design and ask that got certain features that make it more likely that the person will find it compelling.

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Erez (18:21):

Hmm. Once I've honed the ask, how do I then motivate the person to comply with that ask? And the holding the ask process is something that can be a back and forth with the individual over time too. It can evolve. But once you've kind of honed the ask and you've gotten to, to an ask you, you kind of wanna make sure that there are three key things involved. One is you want there to be some way for the person to feel accountable in, in a one-on-one relationship. You probably you who's checking in on the person, how's it going with this thing that we were talking about? Is there some way that I can help you think through the challenges you're facing, et cetera. Right. at some point we, we ran a study where we told people, Hey, we were gonna possibly call you and to hear about your situation at the polls after you voted.

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Erez (19:01):

And this turned out like increased voting rates just 'cause they knew that they, somebody might call them. So that kind of accountability that's built into this, like caring if you actually succeeded it turns out is, is somewhat effective. Another one is when you're honing the ask implicitly, what we're thinking about there is to make sure that there are no excuses, which is something we've already talked about today. As you're going through and thinking about did we get the right ask? You wanna be thinking about did we leave a lot of excuses on the table? Hmm. And the other thing is to start thinking about connecting this individual with lots of other people who are kind of involved in the same effort. Yeah. Seeing that lots of other people are doing this is fairly motivating and almost certainly they're not alone in, in the efforts they're taking in order to increase sustainability.

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Erez (19:41):

And once they see other people doing it, they're like, oh, okay, this is like, I'm part of a movement. This is something that people tend to expect, or if they don't expect it now they're going to soon. And so I wanna kind of skate to where the puck is. And so those are the three things that I would do once I'd hone the ask observability, make sure that the excuses really aren't there and provide this person with, with some feeling that this new behavior they're taking on is actually kind of expected from them of their desired social group.

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Katelan (20:07):

Hmm. I, not that I'm going to go about doing this necessarily, but I think it'd be really compelling to actually start with your neighborhood because Amazon specifically is such a visual thing. You see the Amazon truck pull up on your street and you see them go to all the different houses and drop stuff off. So I think it'd be really compelling to even start perhaps with your neighbors instead of friends and family. Unless you live, you live next to your friends and family.

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Erez (20:30):

And I would start with my neighbors instead of like trying to push them not to use Amazon. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, I would like work with them to figure out what is the smart thing for us to do together that makes our use of Amazon more sustainable. So not to presume that everybody, for everybody, the answer is not to use Amazon. If somebody is spending a lot of time driving half an hour to Costco each way instead of using Amazon in order to buy toilet paper, probably that's not actually a sustainable solution. In fact, Amazon was a more sustainable solution. And so we start by doing that and then after that we then say, okay, things like making sure everybody's on an Amazon Day delivery, you know, making sure everybody is using Amazon in order to do the things that are sustainable and not, and having kind of rules of thumb that allow them to, to do that would be probably how I'd start with my neighbors.

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Katelan (21:13):

Yeah, I love that. So I wanted to talk for a second about the fact that we are making sustainable choices quite often. For example, you might go to the library and borrow a book instead of buying it from Amazon or buying it online, and then we feel really good about it, but then we need to buy laundry detergent or toilet paper and then all of a sudden we're buying everything from Amazon all over again. And so I'm wondering like, what is it about convenience that makes us forget that feel good feeling of doing the more sustainable thing or the more community rooted thing? How do we forget about it so quickly? Or like how do we make sure that we're able to tap into that at a future time and remember how good the good thing felt?

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Erez (21:55):

It goes back to this question of like, is the motivation already in place? Hmm. And if not, like how do we put it in place? Yeah. And how do we make it so that somebody feels like anytime I'm consuming, actually this is something that I'm kind of answerable for in some abstract way. Yeah. It's certainly not there now, like socially in the United States, just like you can buy whatever you want, it's kind of cool when you find a good deal. Yeah.

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Erez (22:16):

What we'd really like is for society to be shifting away from that. And, and you know, the people listening to a podcast like this are probably on the vanguard of that and they're, they're probably thinking through the tricks they can use on themselves and maybe a few people around them. For those folks, I, I return to the idea of breaks rules of thumb almost like what's your New Year's resolution this year? Like, how are you gonna buy stuff, make, make a New Year's resolution that changes the way you purchase things going forward? But like, start with an overarching resolution, like a New Year's resolution, which is fairly strong Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> where you say, am am I gonna meet this or not? Sit down and spend the time to think about how you're going to meet it and make sure that it's something actually doable.

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Erez (22:57):

Hmm. So you have to kind of simultaneously think about a set of rules that is not too easy, but not too hard. If it's too easy, it didn't accomplish anything. If it's too hard, you're not gonna do it. A similar thing is something I see with people who want to consume less meat. They'll often make a New Year's resolution to consume less meat, but they sit down and they write a set of rules under what conditions do I buy meat? Under what conditions do I not, under what conditions do I eat them? I'm not. And when they do that set of rules in advance and then try to stick with it, how many exceptions do I get a week? You know, that kind of stuff. That kind of process seems to work pretty well on yourself. You're, you're being very, very precise with yourself as to how you're going to accomplish the same. You have to spend a little time on it though.

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Katelan (23:38):

Okay. So I wanna finish with a listener question from someone named Katie in Toronto and she asked,

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Katee (23:44):

How can we close the action versus intent gap when it comes to climate action?

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Erez (23:49):

That's good. The action intent gap is a phrase often used by behavioral science people to demonstrate that many people, if you ask them, will tell you, I want to be more sustainable, but then they don't do anything about it. Right. Before we even answer case question, I will step us back to where we started this conversation, which is, is it really an action intent gap or do we actually have an intent problem? Hmm. Okay. And so I actually start by by by saying, let's just make sure first that the intent is there. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And then once we have that closing, the action intent gap tends to be a function of making things easier. Creating the intent is often about crafting the social environment. Hmm. First we have to make it so that somebody feels like this is something that is good for society and that they're contributing in the ways that they and those around them feel is a part of being a good person. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But once you've done that, if they're already motivated, what's standing between you and success is really just actually in fact making the sustainable action more convenient and so more convenient and cheaper. Yeah. And so we're left with the things that we haven't been focused on, which is how do we make non convenience more convenient?

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Katelan (24:55):

Yes. Perfect. That's, that's the tricky part. <Laugh>, I think that you've given us some really great tips to designate a time to think about your purchasing for the next week. Perhaps to avoid instant gratification that we seek from consumer culture. Some great tips to wrangle some more people in to our efforts to ditch convenience culture. Yeah. This has been really great. Well thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

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Erez (25:21):

Thank you. It was very interesting.

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What Happens if We Get This Right, with Sanchali Seth Pal

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Katelan (25:28):

When you think about big climate actions, you can take money and your spending may not be at the top of your list, but it's crucial. And I'm not even talking about donating to environmental orgs, which is great. Please do that. I'm talking about the fact that our household spending influences over 65% of global emissions. So when we decide to spend our money on Amazon instead of someplace else, what happens? That's what I wanted to find out from commons founders. St. Charlie, St. Paul. Hi San Charlie.

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Sanchali (25:59):

Hey Katelan.

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Katelan (26:01):

Okay. So there's always been this push and pull between consumer power and company power, especially in the sustainability space. An example is like Amazon ship stuff fast because we want them to ship the stuff fast. But I guess I'm just wondering how much can we really blame Amazon for increasing our reliance on convenience culture?

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Sanchali (26:19):

So Amazon holds 38% of the e-commerce market in the US and it's the biggest player by far. Walmart is is number two, but they only have 6% of the market share. And Amazon has that market share for a reason. They've been really good at re-engineering the way we shop. Basically they're causing us to buy more stuff, buy more stuff from them, and even buy more stuff that we don't really need.

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Katelan (26:45):

Hmm. Sneaky how are they doing that?

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Sanchali (26:47):

Amazon has pioneered a lot of really interesting ways to make us shop more conveniently. Like the Amazon Prime subscription and especially the one click purchase, new research from Cornell shows that signing up for an online retailer's one click purchase like Amazon's causes consumers to increase their spending by an average of 28.5%. And overall Amazon's data supports this too. Almost a third of Amazon's customers are completing their purchases in three minutes or less

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Katelan (27:16):

Three minutes. <Laugh>, that is so fast. Okay. So it would probably be better if we stopped shopping on Amazon so much, but I don't know, it feels kind of like inescapable in a lot of ways. I mean, I don't wanna give Jeff Bezos one more dime of my money, but sometimes we just need stuff that we can't get locally or that we just wanna buy online because it saves us a lot of time going to a bunch of different stores.

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Sanchali (27:39):

Totally. I get it. And I still buy stuff on Amazon. It doesn't mean we have to never buy things on Amazon, but there are definitely ways that we can rely less on Amazon and save money ourselves.

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Katelan (27:51):

Ooh. All right. Tell us the ways. Okay,

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Sanchali (27:52):

So let's think about one really simple thing. Maybe we still buy stuff on Amazon, but we all unsubscribe from Amazon Prime, which makes us shop a little bit less on Amazon. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So let's think about the impact of that. So an Amazon Prime subscription costs $140 a year, plus Amazon Prime members spend way more money on stuff on Amazon every year. So the average Amazon Prime member is spending $72 more per month on stuff at Amazon and that's a total of $864 per year. So if you add up your Amazon Prime subscription plus all the extra stuff you're buying that's over a thousand dollars that prime members are spending on Amazon, that non-prime members aren't.

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Katelan (28:35):

Okay. Yeah. Love saving money.

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Sanchali (28:37):

We'd also save a lot of carbon by buying $72 less of stuff on Amazon per month. That's a carbon savings of about 25 kgs of CO2 per month, or almost 300 kgs of CO2 per year. Also, if we wanted a short order version of saying that, I might just say by spending that $860 or so less per year on stuff, we're saving about 300 kgs of CO2 as well. And for the average American, that's about 2% of their annual footprint. So literally by clicking one button to cancel your prime membership, you could be saving about a thousand dollars and 2% on your annual carbon footprint.

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Katelan (29:17):

Hmm. Yeah, I mean if I cancel my Amazon subscription, I know I'd save a lot of money on impulse purchases, but I guess I'm wondering because there's still a lot of stuff that if I stop buying on Amazon, I still need to buy it someplace else.

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Sanchali (29:31):

For sure. In reality, you might not save that full a thousand dollars and 2%. Some of that you might not buy, but other parts of that you might shift to other more local vendors. Maybe your local hardware store or your local bookshop. Even if we save like just half of that or even a third, that's really great 'cause we're saving money personally and carbon collectively and generally we're creating more intentionality about how we spend our money and which businesses we support.

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Katelan (30:00):

I love the idea of giving less of my money to Jeff Bezos and more to local businesses, especially because they've been struggling so much since the start of the pandemic.

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Sanchali (30:09):

That's such a good point. And I think a really great example of this is the local bookstore. Amazon sells approximately 300 million print books every year, which is about $28 billion worth of revenue for them. And in the US they own over half of the print book market.

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Katelan (30:27):

Oh no, <laugh>, that's a lot. So what's the carbon impact here? Like if I buy my book from a local bookstore, am I saving carbon or is it just better for my community?

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Sanchali (30:38):

It's a great question. I mean, it's definitely better for your community. The question of whether it's saving carbon actually depends on how you get to the bookstore. Hmm. Interestingly, like the biggest difference between the carbon emissions of buying locally versus buying online is the transportation. So if you can get to your local bookstore in a really carbon efficient way, like you can walk or you can bike or you can take public transit, the emissions of buying that book are lower than if you were to buy it online. But if you were to make a single car trip out to a bookstore that was say several miles away just to buy that one book, the emissions of your book purchase would be higher than if Amazon had optimized your delivery on their transit routes. So if you can figure out a really green way to get to your bookstore or combine it with a trip you're planning to make anyway, you're probably saving carbon by buying from your local bookstore. Especially if your local bookstore happens to be secondhand, then that's amazing. You're definitely having an impact. And also sticking it to Jeff,

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Katelan (31:39):

I love that. Okay. So even if my local book has a higher footprint than an Amazon book, it's still part of like a larger habit to curb my reliance on convenience culture. So even if that one book is a little bit higher footprint, it probably means that I'm buying way less stuff overall and so my footprint's gonna be lower hopefully.

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Sanchali (31:59):

Yeah, totally. I feel like that's a really interesting way of thinking about our shopping choices in general is like some of it's about the exact thing we buy. Some of it is about the things we do around that purchase. Like did we also add like three other things to our cart? Then the carbon footprint of that book was definitely higher than if I'd just gone to my local bookstore and just bought that book. Or like, how, what else am I doing around it? Am I driving in my really high carbon car to get there? All of these things are like part of how we think about the sustainability of our lifestyles. So absolutely

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Katelan (32:32):

Love that. Nothing's in isolation.

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Sanchali (32:35):

Definitely. And I mean, one of the most sustainable ways we can think about getting books is just to go to our local library. I mean, it's such an amazing way to share resources with the people in our community, especially if you can get there in a low carbon way. There's no lower carbon way to get your books. And if you have an e-reader like downloading the ebook from the library, it saves you money, it saves you carbon. And we support local libraries.

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Katelan (32:58):

I love the library. You've given us a lot to go on here. I'm feeling very motivated to cancel my prime subscription and I might even take the app off my phone.

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Sanchali (33:07):

Oh my gosh, that's such a good idea. The way we set up our phones and the way we use our phones are such a huge factor in convenience culture. Actually phones trigger way more impulse purchasing. 48% of consumers said that they were making impulse purchases on their phone versus only 19% who were saying they were doing that on their laptop. So generally like impulse purchases thrive in convenience when we delete our apps or we delete that prime subscription. Or even if we just move that app from our home screen to somewhere else on our phone, we're setting ourselves up to make more intentional shopping choices.

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Katelan (33:42):

I'm doing it right now.

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Sanchali (33:43):

Amazing. That was a huge action.

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Katelan (33:46):

<Laugh>. Thank you so much, char.

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Sanchali (33:48):

You're welcome.

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Katelan (33:53):

A common theme that keeps coming up on this show is that one of the biggest solutions to our sustainability woes is to slow down companies like Amazon and tmu. They use perks like fast free shipping and one click ordering to make you feel like it's so easy. Why not just buy it now? When we start to question if we actually need things fast or if we need them at all, we can start saving money, saving carbon, and moving more of our spending into more sustainable businesses. Before your next Amazon purchase, or at least before the next Amazon Prime day. Try some of these tips from today's episode.

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Katelan (34:33):

Keep a list of items on your phone that you need to buy, then once a week, sit down to shop them on Amazon all at once. But before you check out, see if it makes sense to buy any of those items at a local store or small business to divert your money to more sustainable or community rooted brands. Better yet, you can borrow books and media from your local library or get all kinds of tools, appliances, and home goods from your local Buy nothing group for free. When you do buy from Amazon, choose the Amazon Day shipping to cut down on packaging a bit. This won't work all the time, but give it a shot. We'd love to hear how it goes. If you have a sustainable habit or hot take, we wanna hear it go to the Commons earth slash podcast to submit to the show.

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Katelan (35:18):

If you are on a mission to become a more sustainable shopper. We had another episode earlier this season on over consumption. If you enjoyed this episode, I think you're gonna get a lot from that one too. Another great place to start your sustainable shopping journey is in the Commons app. Our team at Commons built a directory with hundreds of climate friendly brands right in the app that you can use to find the most sustainable brands out there. And we just released our top picks for some of those hard to find sustainable essentials like socks, underwear, jeans, and sneakers. Thank you to our listeners who so openly offered their perspectives on convenience culture and Amazon today. You heard from,

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Katelan (36:00):

We have one more episode left this season and we'd love to hear your feedback. Let us know what you think of the show by leaving a rating or review. It would really mean a lot. And if you want more second nature, come hang out with us on Instagram at Second Nature Earth and remember to head to the show notes for citations and further reading. The editor and engineer on this episode was Evan Goodchild. It was written and produced by me, Kaitlyn Cunningham. In our next episode, we're finishing the season where we started with plant-based eating. But this time we're talking about the triumphs and tribulations of trying to eat plant-based around friends and family who don't. For now, I'll leave you with this last word from Daria Anova. In Washington DCI

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Daria (36:43):

Was very sick and I was home bound for a few weeks and that's when actually I came across common app. So looking at my shopping trends made me completely reevaluate my values so to speak and consider my approach to shopping. First, I started with cutting down my Amazon purchases. I just made a list of what's needed and cannot be purchased nearby. And I made sure that I placed an order once a month, not each time something came to my mind and I needed it. Tomorrow, which was never really the case. So go and web, just one list per month versus like random orders save me actually a lot of money and based on the app, lots of carbon footprint as well. And eventually I just canceled my subscription <laugh> which was, that was quite an experience. So I would say to think about all the saved money you can use for something truly fun and valuable, maybe a trip.

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The Prime Effect: How Amazon Has Us Hooked on Convenience

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Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, our use of Amazon has skyrocketed. Amazon has become the poster child for convenience culture, but the time we save for the sake of convenience is putting us in financial and carbon debt.
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In this episode, we're grappling with our fraught relationship with our Amazon Prime subscriptions and getting practical tips to break free from convenience culture and start shopping more sustainably.
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On this episode, you'll hear:

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Listeners share their complex, conflicted feelings about using Amazon.
MIT research scientist Erez Yoeli shares how we can have a more sustainable relationship with Amazon and how to close the action vs intent gap.
How Amazon gets you to buy so much stuff and how its fast-paced shipping comes at the cost of workers' health and pay.

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Find Second Nature wherever you listen to podcasts: Spotify | Apple Podcasts

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Here are some of the people you'll hear from in this episode:

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Citations and further reading

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Episode credits

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Listener contributions: Daria Panova, Diana Holguin, Freya Dumasia, Karen Jean and Rachel Martinson, Katee Hui, Kimberly Foley, Lawrence Hott, Miriam Jornet, Nicole Collins, Rozalia Agioutanti‍
Featuring: Erez Yoeli and Sanchali Seth Pal‍
Editing and engineer: Evan Goodchild‍
Hosting and production: Katelan Cunningham

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Full Transcript

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Katelan (00:00):

Hey, there you are listening to Second Nature. This is a podcast from Commons where we talk to people about how they're living sustainably in an unsustainable world. I really hate to pull a back in my day, but indulge me for a second. Back in my day in the nineties and early OTTs, let's say you needed a new pair of socks, you'd probably just wait until the next time you were out running errands. Then you'd swing by the nearest all-purpose big box store and get a pair of socks. And depending on how close you were to your nearest target or Walmart and how many other things you had to buy, the whole thing could take you from 30 minutes to, I don't know, an hour or so.

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Katelan (00:42):

But nowadays, if you need a new pair of socks, a lot of us start our search online. And anytime you're buying anything online, you're sure to find an Amazon product listing toward the top of your Google search. When you buy socks on Amazon, you may get them the next day, which is notably longer than a run to the store. But the upside is, as we all know, Amazon is super convenient, dangerously convenient with a few taps in a few minutes, you've ordered your socks. And the Amazon employees and maybe the robots, they, they take it from there. But one pair of socks is not the problem. Here we are defaulting to the convenience of Amazon so much that we're spending extra money buying stuff we don't need, and having a detrimental impact on the environment, probably without even realizing it. So how do we deprogram ourselves from prioritizing speed and cost over people in the planet? Can we slow down our buying habits in a world that continues to move faster and faster? I'm your host, Kaitlyn Cunningham, and this episode of Second Nature is all about convenience, culture, and its poster child Amazon. Today we're facing our complicated relationship with Amazon head on and hearing from listeners who are struggling with how to balance convenience with conscious consumerism, we're gonna hear from MIT Research scientist Ezio about how we can break the convenience culture cycle and close the gap between our actions and our intentions. And we're talking to St. Charlie, St. Paul who's gonna help us understand the collective carbon impact of our Amazon Prime subscriptions. Let's get into it.

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Katelan (02:22):

You probably know that sound. It's the sound of ripping through the tape on a box. It could be any box, but statistically speaking, it's probably an Amazon box. Amazon has permeated our lives so much, at least here in the US, that it's hard to imagine life before it. In the US in 20 22, 98 0.2 million households received deliveries from Amazon. That's over 76% of households still. I was truly shocked to find out how much our Amazon purchases have gone up in just the past few years. Last year, Amazon shipped 5.9 billion packages in the US making them the second biggest parcel carrier after the US Postal Service. That's nearly three times more packages than they were shipping in 2019. So when did Amazon start seeing a spike in orders? Well, it was in 2020 during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. But in the years after the pandemic, our reliance on Amazon didn't go back to pre pandemic levels.

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Katelan (03:23):

In fact, Amazon is shipping more and more packages every year, and they're doing it faster and faster. In the first quarter of this year, Amazon reported that nearly 60% of prime orders arrive at the same day or the next day in the top 60 US metro areas. And most of those orders, 89% of them include just one to two items. These two factors, speed and package size tell a compelling story of convenience culture. We're not only ordering more from Amazon than ever and getting our stuff faster than ever, but we're ordering in this kind of shortsighted way. Amazon used to have a $25 minimum for free shipping, but with a prime subscription, you can decide that you need $5 socks and you need them Now. You won't get it now, but probably in the next day or two. Convenience culture is a climate issue because it requires more vehicles, packaging, and warehouses to get our things to us faster.

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The Prime Effect: Listener Montage

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Katelan (04:16):

And when it's so easy to buy, we buy a lot of stuff we don't need, and a lot of it ends up in landfills. Sure, there are some things you do need quickly, and eliminating convenience. Culture doesn't inherently eliminate Amazon. But if we collectively change our relationship with Amazon and convenience culture at large, it could lead to less trucks on the road, less warehouses and less emissions. On top of that, a shift from convenience culture can empower us to move our money away from Amazon and back into our local communities. And look, I'll be the first one to admit that it's hard not to default to Amazon. I'll go through a couple months where I'm Amazon free, and then I'll need to rush ship supplements for my dog. Or I'll wanna buy a specific storage container and a specific size, and all of a sudden I'm finding reasons to buy anything on Amazon for like the next month or two. So how can I say I care about sustainability when my recycling bin is full of Amazon boxes? For better or for worse, I know I'm not the only one who's in this complicated relationship with Amazon,

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Nicole (05:18):

The wonderful company Amazon,

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Diana (05:24):

I haven't. Okay, that's not true. I purchased one thing from Amazon since November of last year. It's just so convenient, but that's part of the problem. It's too convenient. My husband's he'll buy shoes, but instead of just buying one pair, he'll order four pairs from Amazon to try them all on. And I'm just like, oh my God.

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Rozalia (05:48):

Like I personally still use Amazon a lot. It's so convenient and I hate for doing that. And at the same time, I try not to judge myself and also compliment that with other options, which I do. I really do. I do try to support small businesses so much, and then there's some other times that I choose to put my own comfort on top of it.

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Kim (06:09):

So I'm also working on not buying from Amazon.

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Larry (06:13):

Just the ease of shopping on Amazon started to get to me. I felt like I was hooked in, like I had an Amazon habit, and then I started learning what happens to returns and they really aren't sold again, and they just pile up and then they go to second sellers or they get thrown away. I haven't cut down to the habit completely 'cause there's things I want that I can't find anywhere else. I sort of go back and forth between my driving to the store to buy something versus the truck coming to my house. So it's very confusing about what's the best thing to do when I'm shopping.

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Speaker 7 (06:42):

I'm not perfect, you know, I still sometimes order things from Amazon, you know, like, but every time I'm like, I'm kind of conscious of it, it's no longer just this, this unconscious moving through the world. You know?

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Freya (06:54):

I just think, you know, the richest man in the world doesn't need more of my money.

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Miriam (06:58):

The global North tends to overbuy everything at any time of the year and at an incredible level of convenience, all the deliver to your doorstep within just one click. But that's so called convenience for you this day or this week is extremely convenient for this month, this year, or in the next years globally.

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Diana (07:19):

I know I've read that half the things that you return to Amazon don't go back into rotation. They just, they just get thrown out. And that just seems so crazy to me that for our momentary convenience, like there's such a huge impact in the waste. Nobody thinks about where all this waste goes, or a lot of people don't think about where it goes and it just, it's just mind blowing that the system has it. So we just live our lives, especially here in the States. It's just so convenient, so easy. And it's just like we are not directly seeing the impacts of the actions that we take. It's people in other countries where all our waste is shipped or the pollution in the oceans and just, I mean, everything, it, everything, it's, it's a lot. Ah,

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Interview with Erez Yoeli, MIT research scientist

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Katelan (08:14):

Amazon works fast, but the company can't keep up its pace of work in a responsible way. In the past several years, Amazon has faced a lot of labor allegations, including wage theft, dangerous and illegal labor practices and union busting. In fact, earlier this year, Amazon was fined nearly $6 million for 59,000 labor violations across just two Southern California facilities. A lot of us are caught in this tricky spot where we don't wanna shop on Amazon, but we want the convenience that it offers. Reckoning with our reliance on Amazon means reckoning with our reliance on convenience. I wanted to unpack and unravel this a little bit more. So I, I called up Ezio, he's an MIT research scientist who's focused a lot of his work on altruism human behavior and how to get people to buy better. Hi Erez, thanks for coming on the show.

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Erez (09:08):

Hey, thank you for having me.

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Katelan (09:09):

So at Commons, we think a lot about how we can make the sustainable option the easiest option. And sometimes it's the easiest choice, but it's not always like hang drying your laundry takes a few extra minutes, but you get a lot of, you know, you save a lot of carbon, you save microplastics. And so you'd think with all those benefits that everyone in the US would be air drying their laundry, but they're not. And so I guess my question is, do you think that we avoid the slower, more sustainable habits or purchases because we don't know that they're the most sustainable? Or are we just always gonna pick the most convenient thing no matter what?

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Erez (09:43):

I think there's a mix, and I think it depends on the person. Many people don't know that hang drying is actually much more sustainable. Some people, if you kind of force 'em to think about the topic, might guess that some people might know it, some people might kind of figure it out. Many people haven't thought about it. And so to some extent you have kind of two things. One is that they don't know, but the other is that they actually kinda lack of motivation to know, hmm, why do I really need to know that hang drying is better? Like, it's just kind of normal to use a dryer. In fact, it's kind of weird to have your dirty laundry hanging out in the, in the public. In in, in the US it's pretty common. In Europe, it's pretty common in where I'm originally from in Israel, but mm-hmm, <affirmative> in the US that's kind of unusual. So they're just kind of do the normal thing and, and not seek to be very different from that. So we kind of need to give them a reason to wanna find out in the first place.

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Katelan (10:30):

Hmm, interesting. So you actually have a TED talk titled How to Motivate People to Do Good for Others. And in it you had this line, we've got the solution. The problem is people, so in the spirit of motivating people to do good, one of the steps that you gave is to eliminate excuses. So I'm wondering how can we eliminate excuses for ourselves when we want to not spend that, those, those extra minutes hang dry or when we want to use Amazon and do this two day shipping, how can we motivate ourselves to not do that?

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Erez (11:00):

I think it's a really tough problem because fundamentally there just are a lot of excuses in place. We're busy. Amazon makes it very easy. There's always kind of something that can come up to make it so that not choosing the convenient option and choosing the sustainable option might not be the priority right now. Hmm. And so when you are presented with situations that legitimately have many excuses, if you're kind of artificially trying to take those excuses away, that often isn't all that compelling. But that said, we can do it to some extent. There's kind of these behavioral tricks that people do use to sometimes do that. So for instance, a trick I've heard is friends of mine, a handful of them don't have Amazon on their phone. This forces them to remember the thing that they really needed or to write it down and to go to their computer and actually order it from Amazon there in a more deliberate fashion.

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Erez (11:50):

Another example, one that I use is I actually have, I keep a list of it's called I Want. And the I want list is where I put everything that I want to buy. And it can be on a whim, it can be something that I really legitimately need, but there's this kind of step where stuff has to end up on that list. And if it stays on that list long enough and I'm reviewing that list, I'm like, yeah, I still really want that thing. Then at that point I go ahead and purchase it. What these kinds of tricks do is they force somebody to be more deliberate about purchases, and that is slightly less convenient, but not much less convenient, and that you are putting some sort of pause and you do have one extra step in terms of going to buy something.

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Erez (12:33):

But it's still the case that Amazon will deliver it to you easily. And you know, you're still even using Amazon and so on. And so you're not having to like drive out of your way or only buy on certain days of the month or something like that, which would be substantially more inconvenient, perhaps effective, but more inconvenient. But it's still somewhat effective in that it kind of puts the brakes on purchasing things that you don't need as much. So at least some category of your consumption is going to shrink by forcing you to rethink it at least like a second time.

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Katelan (13:00):

I like that trick. I feel like a lot of just avoiding convenience culture and, and avoiding overconsumption is just slowing down in general. <Laugh>, like that's kind of what it comes down to,

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Erez (13:11):

Right? We have these impulses that are like, oh, ah, that would be nice, or, oh, I like that, or that could help me solve this problem. And those impulses have some truth to them almost always. In today's world, it's so easy to act on those impulses. Maybe historically it wasn't as easy and that's perhaps, you know, part of how we got here or maybe in general just there's pros to making things easier and cons. And one of the cons is that it's maybe a little too easy to act on that kind of impulse. And ultimately you end up with a house where an enormous amount of the stuff in there is actually not getting a very high intensity use. And then you have to go and marry condo your house.

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Katelan (13:46):

Yes, I have done that before <laugh> a couple times. A very common excuse is that we're busy, right? Which is true. I think a lot of people are busy and so sometimes we really do need that two day shipping, but sometimes we don't. And it seems like busy culture kind of feeds convenience culture and vice versa. And I'm kind of wondering like, how do we break free from that cycle? How do we rely less on convenience? How do we force ourselves to kind of find the time to slow down so we don't feel the need to get everything in two days?

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Erez (14:15):

It's a really good question because being busy is often a sign that you have a lot of cool stuff to do. <Laugh>, you hear the advice to people slow down and it's sometimes very good advice. I'm not saying it's never good advice, but there is almost always built into that advice slow down by giving up on something that you actually care about. Yeah. And for some people that's a luxury that they can afford to do and may make sense for them. For some people it may not even be affordable for somebody who's very busy because they're holding down three jobs because they're a single parent maintaining a, a family I'm not in the business of telling 'em to slow

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Katelan (14:49):

Down. Exactly.

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Erez (14:50):

For those of us who can afford to, there is a question of whether you want to, and typically it, it does mean giving something up. And so something that I would kind of ask in, in response, not hearing that somebody was giving the advice slow down as a means of motivating people to be less reliant on say, convenience culture or maybe for a a, a number of other reasons. They would ask, well, what is this person giving up by, by slowing down? Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>. And is that something that's good or or bad overall? Is this a worthwhile change? And, and so I would first ask, should you slow down? For instance, if you're somebody who's working on sustainability problems at a company like Commons <laugh>, could you slow down? Yeah. I kind of want you guys not to slow down. I kind of want you guys to be pretty busy and and to like be, be having a huge impact.

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Erez (15:37):

Yeah. Yeah. I think the world probably benefits from that. And so maybe I'm not in such a hurry to tell you guys to slow down <laugh>. So, so that's an example of a situation where, where I might be more hesitant to use that solution and instead might say, instead of slowing down, try to carve out space that is slower. There's naturally in your weak some space that might be a good fit for you to be thinking in like a different space where you can make these kinds of decisions in a slower way and use other kinds of tricks like the ones we were just talking about, maybe other kinds of tricks in order to force yourself into that mindset once in a while and then try to, to corral decisions around purchasing into that mindset. Hmm. So that, that might be how I would approach the problem instead of just recommending in general, people slow down, which seems like it's not always the right advice.

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Katelan (16:22):

I really like that. So almost kind of saying like, once a week I'm gonna sit down and kind of like think through what the things are that I need and I'm in this mind space that's a little bit different. It's not Wednesday night. I'm not trying to like order dinner and do a thousand other things at the same time. I'm, this is what I'm focused on.

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Erez (16:37):

Yeah. Yeah. Or stuff, A cup of tea, <laugh> chill out. You you used to watch an episode of whatever, but instead like spend some time thinking over, it's almost like in tech they have these Monday morning scrums and you like talk about what are we gonna accomplish this week? It's almost like course have a cup of tea, have a have a self scrum and think through like, what is my week gonna look like from a logistical standpoint, including things like, what am I gonna purchase? And if you can do that, that that seems like it's going to change the nature of buying things a little bit for you in a way that's probably productive, constructive, and, and will lead to more sustainable choices.

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Katelan (17:13):

A lot of our, our listeners kind of like ask questions about how can I get people in my family to do X whatever the thing is, plant-based eating, ditching Amazon, that kind of thing. I wonder if in your research how you've seen, I don't know, like how you've seen peers or community help to influence or motivate better behavior.

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Erez (17:34):

I do. We, in fact, we're gearing up to write a book on topic that's like this. So basically the question, how do you motivate people to do good for others? And the idea is for somebody to be able to pick up that book who is just a, a regular old individual and not necessarily a CEO or celebrity. And, and for them to be able to have an impact. Also, we tend to advise kind of three sets of behaviors. But I think even before you would pick up this book and try these behaviors, which I'll describe to you in a second, yeah. I think you would wanna start by thinking through and maybe even a conversation with the person, depending on the relationship. What is the ask? What are you actually gonna ask of this person? Okay. And you, you kind of wanna design and ask that got certain features that make it more likely that the person will find it compelling.

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Erez (18:21):

Hmm. Once I've honed the ask, how do I then motivate the person to comply with that ask? And the holding the ask process is something that can be a back and forth with the individual over time too. It can evolve. But once you've kind of honed the ask and you've gotten to, to an ask you, you kind of wanna make sure that there are three key things involved. One is you want there to be some way for the person to feel accountable in, in a one-on-one relationship. You probably you who's checking in on the person, how's it going with this thing that we were talking about? Is there some way that I can help you think through the challenges you're facing, et cetera. Right. at some point we, we ran a study where we told people, Hey, we were gonna possibly call you and to hear about your situation at the polls after you voted.

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Erez (19:01):

And this turned out like increased voting rates just 'cause they knew that they, somebody might call them. So that kind of accountability that's built into this, like caring if you actually succeeded it turns out is, is somewhat effective. Another one is when you're honing the ask implicitly, what we're thinking about there is to make sure that there are no excuses, which is something we've already talked about today. As you're going through and thinking about did we get the right ask? You wanna be thinking about did we leave a lot of excuses on the table? Hmm. And the other thing is to start thinking about connecting this individual with lots of other people who are kind of involved in the same effort. Yeah. Seeing that lots of other people are doing this is fairly motivating and almost certainly they're not alone in, in the efforts they're taking in order to increase sustainability.

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Erez (19:41):

And once they see other people doing it, they're like, oh, okay, this is like, I'm part of a movement. This is something that people tend to expect, or if they don't expect it now they're going to soon. And so I wanna kind of skate to where the puck is. And so those are the three things that I would do once I'd hone the ask observability, make sure that the excuses really aren't there and provide this person with, with some feeling that this new behavior they're taking on is actually kind of expected from them of their desired social group.

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Katelan (20:07):

Hmm. I, not that I'm going to go about doing this necessarily, but I think it'd be really compelling to actually start with your neighborhood because Amazon specifically is such a visual thing. You see the Amazon truck pull up on your street and you see them go to all the different houses and drop stuff off. So I think it'd be really compelling to even start perhaps with your neighbors instead of friends and family. Unless you live, you live next to your friends and family.

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Erez (20:30):

And I would start with my neighbors instead of like trying to push them not to use Amazon. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, I would like work with them to figure out what is the smart thing for us to do together that makes our use of Amazon more sustainable. So not to presume that everybody, for everybody, the answer is not to use Amazon. If somebody is spending a lot of time driving half an hour to Costco each way instead of using Amazon in order to buy toilet paper, probably that's not actually a sustainable solution. In fact, Amazon was a more sustainable solution. And so we start by doing that and then after that we then say, okay, things like making sure everybody's on an Amazon Day delivery, you know, making sure everybody is using Amazon in order to do the things that are sustainable and not, and having kind of rules of thumb that allow them to, to do that would be probably how I'd start with my neighbors.

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Katelan (21:13):

Yeah, I love that. So I wanted to talk for a second about the fact that we are making sustainable choices quite often. For example, you might go to the library and borrow a book instead of buying it from Amazon or buying it online, and then we feel really good about it, but then we need to buy laundry detergent or toilet paper and then all of a sudden we're buying everything from Amazon all over again. And so I'm wondering like, what is it about convenience that makes us forget that feel good feeling of doing the more sustainable thing or the more community rooted thing? How do we forget about it so quickly? Or like how do we make sure that we're able to tap into that at a future time and remember how good the good thing felt?

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Erez (21:55):

It goes back to this question of like, is the motivation already in place? Hmm. And if not, like how do we put it in place? Yeah. And how do we make it so that somebody feels like anytime I'm consuming, actually this is something that I'm kind of answerable for in some abstract way. Yeah. It's certainly not there now, like socially in the United States, just like you can buy whatever you want, it's kind of cool when you find a good deal. Yeah.

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Erez (22:16):

What we'd really like is for society to be shifting away from that. And, and you know, the people listening to a podcast like this are probably on the vanguard of that and they're, they're probably thinking through the tricks they can use on themselves and maybe a few people around them. For those folks, I, I return to the idea of breaks rules of thumb almost like what's your New Year's resolution this year? Like, how are you gonna buy stuff, make, make a New Year's resolution that changes the way you purchase things going forward? But like, start with an overarching resolution, like a New Year's resolution, which is fairly strong Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> where you say, am am I gonna meet this or not? Sit down and spend the time to think about how you're going to meet it and make sure that it's something actually doable.

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Erez (22:57):

Hmm. So you have to kind of simultaneously think about a set of rules that is not too easy, but not too hard. If it's too easy, it didn't accomplish anything. If it's too hard, you're not gonna do it. A similar thing is something I see with people who want to consume less meat. They'll often make a New Year's resolution to consume less meat, but they sit down and they write a set of rules under what conditions do I buy meat? Under what conditions do I not, under what conditions do I eat them? I'm not. And when they do that set of rules in advance and then try to stick with it, how many exceptions do I get a week? You know, that kind of stuff. That kind of process seems to work pretty well on yourself. You're, you're being very, very precise with yourself as to how you're going to accomplish the same. You have to spend a little time on it though.

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Katelan (23:38):

Okay. So I wanna finish with a listener question from someone named Katie in Toronto and she asked,

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Katee (23:44):

How can we close the action versus intent gap when it comes to climate action?

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Erez (23:49):

That's good. The action intent gap is a phrase often used by behavioral science people to demonstrate that many people, if you ask them, will tell you, I want to be more sustainable, but then they don't do anything about it. Right. Before we even answer case question, I will step us back to where we started this conversation, which is, is it really an action intent gap or do we actually have an intent problem? Hmm. Okay. And so I actually start by by by saying, let's just make sure first that the intent is there. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And then once we have that closing, the action intent gap tends to be a function of making things easier. Creating the intent is often about crafting the social environment. Hmm. First we have to make it so that somebody feels like this is something that is good for society and that they're contributing in the ways that they and those around them feel is a part of being a good person. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But once you've done that, if they're already motivated, what's standing between you and success is really just actually in fact making the sustainable action more convenient and so more convenient and cheaper. Yeah. And so we're left with the things that we haven't been focused on, which is how do we make non convenience more convenient?

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Katelan (24:55):

Yes. Perfect. That's, that's the tricky part. <Laugh>, I think that you've given us some really great tips to designate a time to think about your purchasing for the next week. Perhaps to avoid instant gratification that we seek from consumer culture. Some great tips to wrangle some more people in to our efforts to ditch convenience culture. Yeah. This has been really great. Well thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

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Erez (25:21):

Thank you. It was very interesting.

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What Happens if We Get This Right, with Sanchali Seth Pal

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Katelan (25:28):

When you think about big climate actions, you can take money and your spending may not be at the top of your list, but it's crucial. And I'm not even talking about donating to environmental orgs, which is great. Please do that. I'm talking about the fact that our household spending influences over 65% of global emissions. So when we decide to spend our money on Amazon instead of someplace else, what happens? That's what I wanted to find out from commons founders. St. Charlie, St. Paul. Hi San Charlie.

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Sanchali (25:59):

Hey Katelan.

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Katelan (26:01):

Okay. So there's always been this push and pull between consumer power and company power, especially in the sustainability space. An example is like Amazon ship stuff fast because we want them to ship the stuff fast. But I guess I'm just wondering how much can we really blame Amazon for increasing our reliance on convenience culture?

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Sanchali (26:19):

So Amazon holds 38% of the e-commerce market in the US and it's the biggest player by far. Walmart is is number two, but they only have 6% of the market share. And Amazon has that market share for a reason. They've been really good at re-engineering the way we shop. Basically they're causing us to buy more stuff, buy more stuff from them, and even buy more stuff that we don't really need.

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Katelan (26:45):

Hmm. Sneaky how are they doing that?

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Sanchali (26:47):

Amazon has pioneered a lot of really interesting ways to make us shop more conveniently. Like the Amazon Prime subscription and especially the one click purchase, new research from Cornell shows that signing up for an online retailer's one click purchase like Amazon's causes consumers to increase their spending by an average of 28.5%. And overall Amazon's data supports this too. Almost a third of Amazon's customers are completing their purchases in three minutes or less

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Katelan (27:16):

Three minutes. <Laugh>, that is so fast. Okay. So it would probably be better if we stopped shopping on Amazon so much, but I don't know, it feels kind of like inescapable in a lot of ways. I mean, I don't wanna give Jeff Bezos one more dime of my money, but sometimes we just need stuff that we can't get locally or that we just wanna buy online because it saves us a lot of time going to a bunch of different stores.

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Sanchali (27:39):

Totally. I get it. And I still buy stuff on Amazon. It doesn't mean we have to never buy things on Amazon, but there are definitely ways that we can rely less on Amazon and save money ourselves.

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Katelan (27:51):

Ooh. All right. Tell us the ways. Okay,

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Sanchali (27:52):

So let's think about one really simple thing. Maybe we still buy stuff on Amazon, but we all unsubscribe from Amazon Prime, which makes us shop a little bit less on Amazon. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So let's think about the impact of that. So an Amazon Prime subscription costs $140 a year, plus Amazon Prime members spend way more money on stuff on Amazon every year. So the average Amazon Prime member is spending $72 more per month on stuff at Amazon and that's a total of $864 per year. So if you add up your Amazon Prime subscription plus all the extra stuff you're buying that's over a thousand dollars that prime members are spending on Amazon, that non-prime members aren't.

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Katelan (28:35):

Okay. Yeah. Love saving money.

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Sanchali (28:37):

We'd also save a lot of carbon by buying $72 less of stuff on Amazon per month. That's a carbon savings of about 25 kgs of CO2 per month, or almost 300 kgs of CO2 per year. Also, if we wanted a short order version of saying that, I might just say by spending that $860 or so less per year on stuff, we're saving about 300 kgs of CO2 as well. And for the average American, that's about 2% of their annual footprint. So literally by clicking one button to cancel your prime membership, you could be saving about a thousand dollars and 2% on your annual carbon footprint.

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Katelan (29:17):

Hmm. Yeah, I mean if I cancel my Amazon subscription, I know I'd save a lot of money on impulse purchases, but I guess I'm wondering because there's still a lot of stuff that if I stop buying on Amazon, I still need to buy it someplace else.

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Sanchali (29:31):

For sure. In reality, you might not save that full a thousand dollars and 2%. Some of that you might not buy, but other parts of that you might shift to other more local vendors. Maybe your local hardware store or your local bookshop. Even if we save like just half of that or even a third, that's really great 'cause we're saving money personally and carbon collectively and generally we're creating more intentionality about how we spend our money and which businesses we support.

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Katelan (30:00):

I love the idea of giving less of my money to Jeff Bezos and more to local businesses, especially because they've been struggling so much since the start of the pandemic.

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Sanchali (30:09):

That's such a good point. And I think a really great example of this is the local bookstore. Amazon sells approximately 300 million print books every year, which is about $28 billion worth of revenue for them. And in the US they own over half of the print book market.

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Katelan (30:27):

Oh no, <laugh>, that's a lot. So what's the carbon impact here? Like if I buy my book from a local bookstore, am I saving carbon or is it just better for my community?

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Sanchali (30:38):

It's a great question. I mean, it's definitely better for your community. The question of whether it's saving carbon actually depends on how you get to the bookstore. Hmm. Interestingly, like the biggest difference between the carbon emissions of buying locally versus buying online is the transportation. So if you can get to your local bookstore in a really carbon efficient way, like you can walk or you can bike or you can take public transit, the emissions of buying that book are lower than if you were to buy it online. But if you were to make a single car trip out to a bookstore that was say several miles away just to buy that one book, the emissions of your book purchase would be higher than if Amazon had optimized your delivery on their transit routes. So if you can figure out a really green way to get to your bookstore or combine it with a trip you're planning to make anyway, you're probably saving carbon by buying from your local bookstore. Especially if your local bookstore happens to be secondhand, then that's amazing. You're definitely having an impact. And also sticking it to Jeff,

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Katelan (31:39):

I love that. Okay. So even if my local book has a higher footprint than an Amazon book, it's still part of like a larger habit to curb my reliance on convenience culture. So even if that one book is a little bit higher footprint, it probably means that I'm buying way less stuff overall and so my footprint's gonna be lower hopefully.

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Sanchali (31:59):

Yeah, totally. I feel like that's a really interesting way of thinking about our shopping choices in general is like some of it's about the exact thing we buy. Some of it is about the things we do around that purchase. Like did we also add like three other things to our cart? Then the carbon footprint of that book was definitely higher than if I'd just gone to my local bookstore and just bought that book. Or like, how, what else am I doing around it? Am I driving in my really high carbon car to get there? All of these things are like part of how we think about the sustainability of our lifestyles. So absolutely

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Katelan (32:32):

Love that. Nothing's in isolation.

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Sanchali (32:35):

Definitely. And I mean, one of the most sustainable ways we can think about getting books is just to go to our local library. I mean, it's such an amazing way to share resources with the people in our community, especially if you can get there in a low carbon way. There's no lower carbon way to get your books. And if you have an e-reader like downloading the ebook from the library, it saves you money, it saves you carbon. And we support local libraries.

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Katelan (32:58):

I love the library. You've given us a lot to go on here. I'm feeling very motivated to cancel my prime subscription and I might even take the app off my phone.

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Sanchali (33:07):

Oh my gosh, that's such a good idea. The way we set up our phones and the way we use our phones are such a huge factor in convenience culture. Actually phones trigger way more impulse purchasing. 48% of consumers said that they were making impulse purchases on their phone versus only 19% who were saying they were doing that on their laptop. So generally like impulse purchases thrive in convenience when we delete our apps or we delete that prime subscription. Or even if we just move that app from our home screen to somewhere else on our phone, we're setting ourselves up to make more intentional shopping choices.

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Katelan (33:42):

I'm doing it right now.

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Sanchali (33:43):

Amazing. That was a huge action.

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Katelan (33:46):

<Laugh>. Thank you so much, char.

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Sanchali (33:48):

You're welcome.

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Katelan (33:53):

A common theme that keeps coming up on this show is that one of the biggest solutions to our sustainability woes is to slow down companies like Amazon and tmu. They use perks like fast free shipping and one click ordering to make you feel like it's so easy. Why not just buy it now? When we start to question if we actually need things fast or if we need them at all, we can start saving money, saving carbon, and moving more of our spending into more sustainable businesses. Before your next Amazon purchase, or at least before the next Amazon Prime day. Try some of these tips from today's episode.

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Katelan (34:33):

Keep a list of items on your phone that you need to buy, then once a week, sit down to shop them on Amazon all at once. But before you check out, see if it makes sense to buy any of those items at a local store or small business to divert your money to more sustainable or community rooted brands. Better yet, you can borrow books and media from your local library or get all kinds of tools, appliances, and home goods from your local Buy nothing group for free. When you do buy from Amazon, choose the Amazon Day shipping to cut down on packaging a bit. This won't work all the time, but give it a shot. We'd love to hear how it goes. If you have a sustainable habit or hot take, we wanna hear it go to the Commons earth slash podcast to submit to the show.

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Katelan (35:18):

If you are on a mission to become a more sustainable shopper. We had another episode earlier this season on over consumption. If you enjoyed this episode, I think you're gonna get a lot from that one too. Another great place to start your sustainable shopping journey is in the Commons app. Our team at Commons built a directory with hundreds of climate friendly brands right in the app that you can use to find the most sustainable brands out there. And we just released our top picks for some of those hard to find sustainable essentials like socks, underwear, jeans, and sneakers. Thank you to our listeners who so openly offered their perspectives on convenience culture and Amazon today. You heard from,

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Katelan (36:00):

We have one more episode left this season and we'd love to hear your feedback. Let us know what you think of the show by leaving a rating or review. It would really mean a lot. And if you want more second nature, come hang out with us on Instagram at Second Nature Earth and remember to head to the show notes for citations and further reading. The editor and engineer on this episode was Evan Goodchild. It was written and produced by me, Kaitlyn Cunningham. In our next episode, we're finishing the season where we started with plant-based eating. But this time we're talking about the triumphs and tribulations of trying to eat plant-based around friends and family who don't. For now, I'll leave you with this last word from Daria Anova. In Washington DCI

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Daria (36:43):

Was very sick and I was home bound for a few weeks and that's when actually I came across common app. So looking at my shopping trends made me completely reevaluate my values so to speak and consider my approach to shopping. First, I started with cutting down my Amazon purchases. I just made a list of what's needed and cannot be purchased nearby. And I made sure that I placed an order once a month, not each time something came to my mind and I needed it. Tomorrow, which was never really the case. So go and web, just one list per month versus like random orders save me actually a lot of money and based on the app, lots of carbon footprint as well. And eventually I just canceled my subscription <laugh> which was, that was quite an experience. So I would say to think about all the saved money you can use for something truly fun and valuable, maybe a trip.

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