Time to cancel your Amazon Prime account
Human Centered Design thinking is flawed. Why It’s time to cancel your Amazon Prime account.
Prime day is finally here, or more accurately prime days, Amazon has extended its annual bonanza of discounts to 48 hours meaning more savings, more sales, and a lot more shipping. Over July 15–16th the e-commerce giant is expected to see an additional $6.1 billion in sales along with a 30% increase in returns on the 17th as customers inevitably realize they don’t need that Nicholas Cage pillow case, even if it is 50% off. With thousands in savings just a click away, the desire to take advantage of these offers can be a tempting but this year there are far bigger savings to be had elsewhere. The saving of our species, our planet, and our future. That’s why this July 15th and 16th I’d encourage everyone to celebrate prime day by cancelling their prime accounts, once and for all.
EXPEDITED SHIPPING IS KILLING THE PLANET
Prime has long been lauded for its fast delivery and convenience but all that convenience comes at a steep price. According to research carried out at the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics, consumers who use expedited shipping emit the most greenhouse gasses of any consumer type. Airplane transportation within the retail supply chain, emits five times the carbon dioxide than road truck transportation. Amazon shipped over 5 billion products to Amazon Prime members in 2017 via free same day, next day and 2 day shipping. We may not be seeing the true cost of shipping reflected in our Amazon bills, but make no mistake, we’re all paying for it in the form of a rapidly changing climate, and the disasters and instability that goes with it.
The environmental, and other issues posed by Amazon are no aberration. They flow logically from a key principle embedded at the company’s core, and indeed from the cores of many of America’s tech titans. One of the guiding design principles at Google, Amazon and Microsoft is human centered design thinking. Namely that design principles should create solutions for problems and opportunities through an exclusive focus on the needs, contexts, behaviors, and emotions of the people that the solutions will serve. Human centered design thinking has given us a lot but it has a deadly blind spot. It fails to consider that, despite our many accomplishments, humans remain at the center of a complex ecosystem that is increasingly shaped, for better or worse, by our actions. As a result, we are plied with a toxic stream of unnecessary products and services that have the unintended side effect of wiping out that delicate ecosystem piece by piece
PRIME’S HUMAN CENTERED DESIGN FAILURE
The creation of Amazon Prime is a perfect example of how human centered design principles have failed us. Prime was created as the next step in solving our insatiable appetite for hyper convenience. However, it was developed without any consideration of its accelerating impact on climate change. Amazon Prime’s mission of guaranteed expedited shipping has had a net negative impact on our planet by exponentially increasing our greenhouse gas emissions. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the transportation sector makes up the largest sector (29%) of America’s greenhouse gas emissions. While cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks make up a majority of the transportation sector’s greenhouse gas emissions, expedited shipping which depends on planes, creates five times the amount of emissions as road trucks.
We must rethink our design principles as products like Amazon Prime serve our short term interest while slowly contributing to the demise of our planet. At our most prestigious universities, we have taught our best and brightest to put human beings at the center of design while completely neglecting that everything on earth is interconnected. It is irresponsible to continue to design products, operations and systems on a hierarchy that places humans at the center of design. Industrial Designer, Lily Saporta Taguiri wrote the article FORCE OF NATURE, where she interviews Karin Ohlenschläger, artistic director at Laboral in Spain and one of the curators of Eco-Visionaries, who described this shift as ecosystemic thinking.
“Our way of life has had a huge responsibility in bringing about ecological disaster, while the ecosystemic perspective implies a change in the relationship between humans and non-human agents,”. Ohlenschläger says “Ecosystemic thinking means net-based, non-hierarchical thinking, in the sense that everything is related and connected to everything else, from the sun to seeds and cells in a metabolic circle.”
For those who are interested in learning more, Professor André Francisco Pilon of the School of Public Health at the University of São Paulo, wrote an extensive piece on how we can implement ecosystemic design.
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF ONLINE SHOPPING
The easiest way to implement ecosystemic thinking is to start by applying it to yourself. Research published by The MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics on the Environmental Analysis of US Online Shopping concluded that consumers who use expedited shipping emit the most greenhouse gasses of any consumer. The research outlined seven different consumer types and analyzed the greenhouse gas emissions of each.
The ‘Traditional Shopper’ is described as one who drives to multiple locations to search for a product, purchases the product in store, and returns the product in store.
The ‘Cybernaut Pick Up’ shopper will search for products online, purchase products online, either pick up the product in store or use regular shipping and will return items in store.
The ‘Cybernaut Impatient’ shopper will search for products online, purchase products online, utilized expedited air shipping and return products online.
The ‘Cybernaut Pick Up’ shopper is the most environmentally friendly shopper as they reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by picking up and returning products in store. The ‘Traditional Shopper’ is the second worse shopper as they emit more greenhouse gas emissions by driving to various stores to conduct their search for a product. The ‘Cybernaut Impatient’ shopper is the least environmentally friendly shopper as they utilize expedited air shipping and return their products online.
Though retail ecommerce sales make up only 5% of all retail sales spent across the US, the ‘Cybernaut Impatient’ shopper is the fastest growing consumer type in the world. Amazon Prime members have quadrupled in 5 years from 25 million in December of 2013 to 103 million in March of 2019. Amazon shipped over 5 billion products to Amazon Prime members in 2017 via free same day, next day and 2 day shipping.
CORPORATE FAILURE OR SELFISHNESS
Amazon has the assets, know how, and wherewithal to build out an electric powered fleet to support their supply chain and reduce their carbon emissions. However it has not only failed to mobilize them, it seems completely disinclined to do so. In May of 2019, Amazon’s investors voted against an employee led proposal to develop a more comprehensive approach to reduce its carbon footprint. Furthermore, the company continues to economically incentivize consumers to use expedited shipping and return products online. The cost to be a Prime member is so minimal at ~$12/month that it barely scratches the surface of the total cost to the environment. To make matters worse, Amazon’s status as an industry leader,means competitors like Walmart and other major corporations and have followed Amazon’s lead and offered free next day shipping. With all of these followers, and massive corporations leaning on human centered design thinking over ecosystemic thinking, it’s easy to see why we have been unable to address the mounting climate crisis. If we all band together and take the small steps to reduce our individual footprint then we may have a chance to save our planet.
CHANGING INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR
As you consider your consumption, keep in mind that there is no one size fits all approach. For instance, it may be more environmentally beneficial for a suburban or rural consumer to order online and pick up in store. If a suburban or rural consumer cannot pick up their products in store, then it might make more sense to accept regular shipping as it’s more environmentally friendly than accepting a product that is express shipped. If you live in an urban area with privileged access to places via mass transit, bike and/or walking, then you can reduce a majority of your greenhouse gas emissions by not taking a cab! Irrespective of where one lives, we should never use expedited shipping, unless there is a true emergency, as it exponentially increases greenhouse gas emissions which accelerate global warming and climate change.
As I consider my own shopping behaviors, I ended my Amazon Prime membership because I could no longer give my money in goodwill to a company that is destroying the planet and our people. When interviewed by the CEO of Business Insider parent Axel Springer, Jeff Bezos stated,
“The only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel. That is basically it.”
As the richest man in the world, it is downright shameful and un-American that the only way he can think of spending his money is on space travel. Let’s quickly consider a short list of things that are more important than space exploration.
- Climate change
- Income inequality / poverty
- Hunger
- Education
- Corrupt governments
- Private prison industrial complex
- Wars / conflicts
If Amazon’s exploitation of human labor at warehouses, rampant abuse of our tax system, controversial support of government agencies like ICE, or Jeff Bezos’s lack of empathy doesn’t bother you, then their business practices contributing to climate change should ensure you never spend another dime on Amazon. Do the right thing this Prime Day, cancel your account, use mass transit, carpool to the store — even if Uber gives you double points NOT to carpool — ride your (Citi) bike, or simply get your 10,000 steps in and walk to the store! Our ecosystem needs better! I beg all of us to investigate our actions, change our behavior where we can, and start today with one little action, cancel your amazon prime account.
