Amazon, oh Amazon...

I actually don't mind having bought and paid for an Amazon Prime membership. Not much anyway. But an experience I have had today has me rethinking the ethics of certain choices.

So, my partner and I are Seattleites without a car. I do love not owning a car. At one time, I used Flexcar, but it's been bought by someone else, and the rates are very high, and I'm unemployed for three months now, so car rentals are definitely a thing of the past. If I had the money, I'd still use it, though, for sure. It's a great program, even if the new company is bigger and meaner.

Of course, not having a car means we spend a very large part of our days traveling. King County has one of the best (if not the very best) transit system in the country. I know there are some contenders for the top spot out there, but Metro transit, coupled with Sound Transit, Community Transit, and Pierce Transit, means that you can get almost anywhere between Everett, Issaquah, and Tacoma on public transit. That's pretty dog gone impressive. On the other hand, we have to plan for an hour travel time for what would take us twenty minutes to drive at midnight.

Also, carrying a case of sodas, three bags of groceries, and a 35 pound pail of clumping cat litter is absolutely impossible on the bus, so sometimes, several times a month anyway, we get a taxi ride home from somewhere, or have groceries delivered by Safeway or Albertson's for a fee. So when Amazon Fresh started delivering groceries in my neighborhood, from a private warehouse located in Bellevue, I was intrigued. At first I was disappointed to have to buy a 79 dollar Amazon Prime membership to be allowed to take advantage of their services. But the membership DOES have it's advantages outside of being able to use Amazon Fresh.

On top of the free 2-day shipping on all products stocked by Amazon.com, I get 3.99 overnight shipping on each of those same items. With Amazon's good deals from time to time on regularly needed stuff, I figured this was a fine benefit to have available for a year. But the real savings for us is in the Amazon Fresh shipping. Fresh delivers orders for free if they are over 30 bucks. That's a HUGE deal for a family of two. Free shipping is often available from Safeway or Albertson's, but you have to spend anywhere from 75 to 150 dollars to get it, depending on whether they're offering a promotion. I just got a free shipping coupon from safeway in the mail - for an order of 100 dollars or more. That's just an awful lot of food, much of which cannot be fresh or it will go bad before we two use it.

So now we can have fresh fruits and vegetables delivered a few times a week, and as long as we spend at least 30 bucks (which is absolutely no problem these days, let's face it) we don't pay for the shipping. This saves us at least two ten-dollar taxi-rides per month. So you can see how 79 bucks for the Prime membership was still a bargain for us.

But like I said, there's those other benefits, too, right? So yesterday I decided that since Amazon had this really great pie plate available for 5 bucks, and I needed a pie plate today to bake a berry pie, I'd just have them overnight it for 3.99 and for a total of 10 bucks, I get a much nicer pie plate than I could get from the local grocery store where I would spend the same. I could have bussed it to Target, but I figured this was available, and easy, so why not.

Well, today I checked the tracking of my wee little pie plate, and I am concerned about this choice. It got into some sort of transport vehicle in Reno and went to Sparks, Nevada. From there, it flew across the North American continent to freaking Ontario, Canada, where it then took a turn, and flew back across North America to arrive in Seattle this morning, where it has now been put on a truck and is headed my way. Wow. Wow, wow, wow.

What an awful lot of carbon in the air, and fossil fuels we will never have back. And just so I didn't have to walk six blocks each way to the store and back? I'm not convinced this choice is in line with my personal ethics.

So, at this point, I've made the decision to always get something locally if the amazon savings are not very significant. Because I feel guilty about this, even though the details and specifics of the pollution and expenditure of fossil fuels was outside my immediate control. The reality is that it was my choice to place the order, so it's worth weighing these factors in the future when I make a purchasing decision.

Still, the bottom line at this point will have to remain savings. If I can save a ton of money buying from Amazon and getting free 2 day shipping, I'll still have to take advantage of that, because I'm just not personally in a position to finance solutions to our global problems.