With the rise in quick commerce, approximately over 2 million deliveries are taken in India daily, which is incredibly unsustainable, contrary to popular belief.
The entire business model of quick commerce revolves around deliveries within a short period of time, typically within the range of 15-30 minutes.
The most important part of the logistics involved in this is the last-mile delivery, which focuses on the delivery of goods from a distribution hub to the user’s doorstep.
Unlike traditional delivery logistics, which involve large-scale warehouses situated on the outskirts of cities to deliver a large amount of goods in bulk, prioritising efficiency through consolidation of goods over speed, quick commerce utilises a dense network of small warehouses termed as “dark stores”.
The rapid expansion of quick commerce has led to an increase in the number of these “dark stores”, which poses a consistent problem to proper land utilisation.
As these warehouses are built on a far smaller scale, they can house a much smaller amount of inventory. Thus, they need to be regularly restocked at frequent intervals, creating a restocking loop. This means that instead of one large truck delivering all the items to the warehouse, numerous visits to the warehouse are a must. This leads to an increase in emissions.
Such warehouses all need to be properly stocked with various goods, especially organic goods like fruits and vegetables which need to be restocked at regular intervals to ensure no spoilage takes place. This, however, leads to immense wastage if the stocked food is not consumed before it spoils.
An overlooked part of the To meet the 15-minute delivery window, the delivery people constantly open and close the refrigerator doors, which allows hot, humid air to rush inside, leading to the cooling units working at maximum capacity the entire time. This increases the amount of electricity consumed, further cementing the environmentally unsustainable nature of quick commerce.
The heat expelled by these HVAC units directly onto the residential areas raises local temperatures, which contributes to the Urban Heat Island effect, where the urban areas experience significantly higher air temperatures than their rural counterparts.
Additionally, to meet the short deadlines, delivery vehicles often rush out with only one or two items which leads to inefficient delivery especially in context of the liters of fuel consumed as these vehicles do not carry as much goods as they possibly could.
This model of business is also not suitable for communities as these “dark stores” are built near residential areas to optimise delivery speed, this more often than not disrupts the local market ecosystem while also posing a threat to the climate. Additionally, the roads of the residential areas which are not built for withstanding the surge of commercial vehicular traffic caused due to the delivery orders and the stocking shipments.
Quick commerce has also led to a shift in consumer psychology. Instead of taking one trip once a month to order say 30 different items from a grocery store, the consumer now instead opts to 5-6 smaller fragmented orders. This change also leads to the consumer ordering “impulse” goods. This leads to an increase in the amount of trips taken to complete the orders further increasing the vehicular carbon emissions.
Although these businesses promote their reliance on EVs to boost their reputation towards environmental sustainability, all this does is push the carbon footprint from the companies to the coal powerplants. This is because over 70% of India’s power grid is reliant on coal.
As India moves forward with aims to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2070, the growth of quick commerce poses a significant hurdle to this ambitious target. Quick commerce is therefore a convenience that we cannot afford.
A probable solution for this moving forward could be the transformation of these dark stores into traditional supermarket which would serve as a facility with two uses: people would be able to visit the store in person to get the goods they need which would eliminate the problems associated with inventory management in quick commerce while also allowing for the storage of goods for delivery by quick commerce allowing for the best of both worlds.
Bibliography
- https://earth5r.org/quick-commerce-sustainability/
- https://www.indiaspend.com/earthcheckindia/how-indian-cities-are-turninginto-heat-islands-975936
- https://www.iasgyan.in/daily-editorials/is-the-10-minute-delivery-model-nece
ssary - https://redseer.com/articles/quick-commerce-finds-its-new-normal-with-scal
e-mix-and-momentum/ - https://gemini.google.com/
