A trans-Tasman panel explores how e-commerce can operate in an environmentally sustainable way. Paul Barclay hosts this ABC discussion with experts from NZ and Australia.

The ABC's Paul Barclay hosts a trans-Tasman panel discussion about how online home delivery can be done in ways that don't make things worse for climate change. The focus is on sustainable packaging and carbon-neutral delivery.

Listen to Kate Bezar, Dr Jonathan Baker, James Chin Moody and Cinzia Cozzolino talking about e-commerce and the environment with the ABC's Paul Barclay

The New Zealand speakers are Kate Bezar from The Better Packaging Co., Dr Jonathan Baker, Senior Lecturer International Business Strategy and Entrepreneurship at AUT. And they're joined in Australia by James Chin Moody from the delivery company Sendle (which competes with Australia Post by flourishing its eco- and carbon-neutral credentials), and Cinzia Cozzolino, the founder of Smoothie Bombs, a product which had once used plastic packaging but has now converted to ecologically kinder alternatives.

Together they explore the economics of sustainable e-commerce - supercharged by Covid restrictions worldwide - while noting the areas in which it remains environmentally challenged.

From the discussion:

Paul Barclay:

An increase in online purchasing means an increase in the packaging that is required to send all of those goods out all over the world. Items that are purchased online require more packaging and wrapping for shipping, in addition to their existing packaging. And often this packaging is plastic. Is this the Achilles heel of e-commerce - that it can, and does, lead to more waste?

Jonathan Baker:

I guess you could argue that. But if you took a more broad perspective of plastics generally, we've had problems with plastics since the invention of plastic as a petroleum product. I'm doing a case study at the moment of the way the plastics industry in the United States managed to deflect all responsibility for this extraordinary waste they were creating, and instead forced that responsibility onto individual consumers who engage in recycling (and much of that is ostensible recycling, not actual), and then governments as well that have to have these agencies that run these recycling programmes…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details