This website is a compilation of my research of the environmental impact of shipping through the lens of consumerism. I looked in three key areas: long transport shipping, last mile delivery, and consumerist culture impacts - mainly Amazon.
My goal with this project is to encourage people to analyze the culture we exist in and the society we are continually building. I want people to think critically about how we are affecting the environment with our actions.
My first two pages: Ocean Transport and Last Mile look at two of the biggest components of shipping. The majority of the world's goods are moved by cargo ships. Last mile delivery is one of the most environmentally impactful parts of the shipping process due to the difficulty around optimizing.
The final page is about one of the primary inspirations for this project: Amazon. Amazon has changed so many norms around what our society expects in regards to e-commerce and commerce in general. I have only been alive for 20 years, and yet I have witnessed a massive change in attitudes. I believe it is important to reflect on Amazon and the impact corporations can have on our culture.
While researching this topic and making this website, I kept in mind one key question: how can people in power use their power to impact corporations and change culture? That is the primary target audience for this project. There is often too much pressure put on individuals to enact system change without power, and I did not want to further enforce that with this project. Systemic changes enacted by people with systemic power often have much more power than individual action from people with lesser power.
One group in particular I kept in mind while working on this were my classmates at Olin. In a few years, we will all hold relative positions of power and privilege - how will we use that? The title of the Biology course is "What Engineers need to Know and Why?". I want my project to embody that as much as possible, and give clear examples of why an engineer needs to know and care about biology. How can we, as oliners, use our relative positions of power to push internally for an environmentally conscious approach. Or at least not an environment last approach.