[earthling8118]

Delivery to stores might be more efficient, but then the last mile cost doesn't go away. Most of the stuff that I would buy from Amazon isn't available at the stores that I go to so it would require an entirely separate trip to somewhere that I would not go otherwise. Often multiple stores.

[throwup238]

It depends on where your stores are and how frugal the rest of your shopping is. My Trader Joes/Costco (five minutes away) is in an eight block shopping center with Best Buy, Home Depot, and a dozen other big box stores which I think is fairly common in America.

Between that and shopping for fresh meat and produce at ethnic markets that are all over the city, the vast majority of my shopping is amortized over staple groceries that I can’t or won’t buy online.

[fnordian_slip]

And in the EU at least, it's not as unfeasible as in most American cities to just do your grocery shopping with a backpack, since there are tons of walkable cities. I go about twice a week, usually when I pass one anyway on the way home, and haven't needed a car for the last fifteen years.

For use cases like this, the last mile is carbon neutral.

Edit: Re-reading my comment, it comes across as if there were no walkable cities in the US. That was not my intention. Of course there are, but from what I've seen, not that many. Also, somehow there is a lot of political opposition to them, because of certain conspiracy theorists who seem to have taken over one of the political parties. And since there are only two worth mentioning, the situation is unlikely to improve.