> colleagues and I reveal that people who walk or cycle have lower carbon footprints from daily travel, including in cities where lots of people are already doing this.
Not to disagree with the broader point, but I think it's worth distinguishing "travel" from "transportation". I don't have a car, and I bike and walk for almost all of my daily personal "travel". But, I think this also makes me more willing to use delivery services, in which case I'm offloading some carbon footprint to trucks and vans which might not be counted as part of my "daily travel". Part of the appearance of reduced emissions can come from sweeping some emissions into a different category.
You might be offloading some carbon onto delivery service, but those services are almost certainly more carbon efficient and you using a personal car to go shopping.
A delivery van might do 200+ deliveries in one trip. Compared to a single delivery in your personal car. That a huge number of people to split the carbon cost between.
You might argue that delivery can travel further, but that would just be ignoring the carbon cost of have goods delivered and stored in a grocery store.
I think almost certainly deliveries are more carbon friendly, after all the goods are coming from the same source, but with delivery every step the carbon footprint is shared with 10s to hundreds of other people. The only exception to this is probably takeaway food, in which case I recommend that you cycle to restaurant and eat there.
I'm willing to believe that a delivery service is more efficient than me personally driving an empty car to pick up something and bring it home. I'm just saying, depending on how stuff is tabulated, one could systematically over-state the emission reductions associated with being a daily cyclist.
I've very pro-bike but this is a pretty good point.
That said, with big panniers or a cargo bike, it's pretty easy to take care of daily needs with a bike. We have an electric cargo bike, and it's somewhat uncommon for us to feel like we need a car for something.
The marginal cost of you using those delivery services is much smaller than you personally driving a car to the shop, though. Delivery companies can very effectively minimise the amortised cost per delivery.
Not to disagree with the broader point, but I think it's worth distinguishing "travel" from "transportation". I don't have a car, and I bike and walk for almost all of my daily personal "travel". But, I think this also makes me more willing to use delivery services, in which case I'm offloading some carbon footprint to trucks and vans which might not be counted as part of my "daily travel". Part of the appearance of reduced emissions can come from sweeping some emissions into a different category.