Bringing about a green revolution in e-commerce

India's e-commerce is going green. Big players are ditching the old ways for eco-friendly practices like carbon-neutral shipping, renewable energy, and green data centers. They're slashing their carbon footprint from start to finish, all while embracing digital upgrades for a sustainable future

- Partha Ghosh

In 2024, India's e-commerce is pivoting towards sustainability due to increasing consumer demand for eco-friendly practices. This shift sees major players adopting greener methods, like carbon neutral logistics and renewable energy, setting new standards for environmental responsibility in the digital era.

The transformation focuses on minimizing the carbon footprint throughout the product life cycle, from raw material extraction to disposal. It involves "green supply chain practices" such as transport optimization and minimalistic packaging, ensuring products are eco-friendly and meet consumer demands.

Digital transformation, integral to e-commerce growth, introduces the challenge of increased greenhouse gas emissions from energy-intensive computing. Increased compute and GPU intensive GenAl adoption across the customer experience and operations journeys leave a heavy carbon footprint. Research estimates the development of GPT-3 required 1,287 megawatt-hours of electricity, resulting in 502 tons of CO2 emissions equivalent to the annual emissions from 112 gasoline cars. This is before consumers started using it.

Other studies found that the world's data centers account for 2.5 to 3.7 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, surpassing the aviation industry's carbon output.Despite using only 0.9% to 1.3% of the world's electricity in 2021, their energy demand could rise to 1.86% by 2030, with a projected surge in data centre power consumption to approximately 4,250 megawatts by 2028, marking a 212X increase from 2023.