In the context of books, a study analysed the energy implications of both retail and online books stores in the United States.

Processes involved in traditional retail book stores:

Processes involved in e-commerce of books:

Again, traditional shopping is more energy intensive in the aspect of personal transportation (yellow box), while e-commerce is more energy intensive in the aspect of packaging (green box). Moreover, the use of air shipping consumes large amount of energy, which then reduces the environmental competitiveness and efficiency of online shopping (blue box).

Traditional shopping of books uses less amount of energy when there is no return of unsold books to the warehouse, compared to e-commerce (red box).