You can buy more in bulk and shipping doesn't just involve the delivery driver, whose truck you just took 1/4th the space of with TP, requiring more resupply trips.
Shipping to a wholesale store is obviously more efficient than to the last mile, I don't see how that's up for debate. Generally you run other errands as well.
In my experience, which I acknowledge is limited to my circle, the only major errand for most households is bulk grocery shopping for the family or shared house. Note that "groceries" here means everything you buy in a big store or cluster of walkably-close stores, so it covers more than just food.
Other journeys in a vehible: A commute maybe, but those are separate journeys from bulk groceries because every household member is going to a different place. Also it's less likely to be in a car. Carrying large shopping bags on a train or bus to another city is not much fun.
Occasionally other trips to social events, see a doctor or whatever, but that's not going to happen in the same trip as bulk groceries.
There is nothing else regular that requires a journey in a vehicle.
Having a delivery driver do a planned circuit to multiple households to deliver bulk groceries is much less driving and pollution than having every household drive to the store and back.
Sure, that last mile is less efficient than shipping to the wholestore store, but that seems irrelevant to the point at hand. It's still much more efficient to do the last mile in a single planned circuit than multiple last miles where everyone goes in and out separately.
You are making guesswork drive a lot of your opinions here. Why can you buy more in bulk in person than when a truck drives to your building? The concept of "last mile" makes no sense for Amazon, since they will drive past your address in the suburbs anyway, and in a city they're already driving to your building (several times per day if it's big).
I agree Instacart is probably garbage for the environment, because in the suburbs it's often a passenger car delivering for just one household, but that's just equal to the baseline.
There's limited space on that truck, you know that right?
They have to resupply. Bulk TP takes up room, a little amount of TP is inefficient.
In no way is getting TP delivered to you ever more efficient than buying from a wholesale store.
You're trying to justify it, for whatever reason. I'm not advocating to banish it, it just seems silly.
> and in a city they're already driving to your building (several times per day if it's big).
Yes they're driving around all day because everyone is buying stuff like TP lol.
- edit to reply below because post limit -
TP is a lightweight, large volume package. The more TP you order more frequently, the less space the truck has, the more amount of resupply trips needed.
The alternative (normal way) I'm proposing is not those cars filling the same void as the truck. It's that you should buy in bulk those items, directly, less frequency and leave more room for mass last mile delivery of items that are small / perishable / unavailable in bulk.
> There's limited space on that truck, you know that right?
What sort of delivery mode is this statement supposed to defend?
I deleted a lot of text to substitute this simple question: if you wanted to bring toilet paper to all 250 apartments in our building, would you use a passenger car or a truck?
