E-Retailers and Environmental Sustainability

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to offer an exploratory review of the extent to which the world’s leading e-retailers are communicating the environmental impact of their business and their environmental sustainability agendas to their customers. The paper draws its empirical material from the most recent information on environmental sustainability posted on the world’s leading e-retailers’ corporate web sites. The findings reveal that the majority of the world’s leading e-retailers publicly report on their commitment to environmental sustainability which embraces climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency, waste management, water management, bio-diversity and nature conservation. However the authors argue that these commitments can be interpreted as being driven as much by business imperatives and the search for efficiency gains as by any genuine commitment to environmental sustainability and that they are couched within existing business models centred on continuing growth. As such E-retailers are currently pursuing a ‘weak’ rather than a ‘strong’ model of sustainability.