If you’ve ever purchased a book, a CD, a DVD or one of the numerous other products offered on Amazon.com chances are you shopped with them due to their selection and rapid shipping guarantees. In just 15 years Amazon have become the largest online retailer on the planet and as such they ship more items per year than many small countries. Naturally packaging and shipping materials are of great importance to the internet giant and there is now news that an eco-friendly choice of shipping may soon be available as part of the checkout process.

The exact details are still pending but Amazon have announced that a new patent has been granted to them which will allow for more environmentally friendly electronic transactions overall. What that will entail is still to be determined by expectations are that both the type of packaging used in the method of transport to get your purchase to you may eventually be determined by the customer. There is a sting in the tail however as choosing eco-friendly delivery could result in slightly slower shipping. This leads to the question of whether customers would select slower shipping if they knew that a more environmentally option was being used to forward the goods?

The reality is this may be a few years in the future, particularly if the option to have packages delivered exclusively via hybrid vehicles is put on the table. It’s probably more likely that Amazon will switch to the most eco-friendly packaging in the marketplace as a first stage, the implementation of such a change could be achieved in the near future and generate a tangible impact upon launch. Like many eco-friendly alternatives the company will need to balance economic reality with such a transition in their services. A company as large as Amazon is certainly a position to manufacture its own shipping materials not only from selected raw materials such as their own replaceable tree farms, but can have the products made in a plant that supplies Amazon exclusively such is their buying power. That manufacturing facility could in turn be state-of-the-art in terms of energy efficiency .The registered patent allows Amazon to initiate a process that enables customers to choose the type of packaging, the amount of packaging and potentially the delivery method when the order is placed. Another option includes the potential for a customer to calculate the carbon footprint of the actual order an in turn be able to purchase carbon offsets.

I’m sure when Amazon was constructed the overall plan for eco-shipping it will be greeted with much media fanfare and customer reaction, I for one sincerely hope that what they look to accomplish will become normal practice for all companies involved with shipping massive amounts of products per day. Unofficial conservative estimates target daily Amazon sales in the region of 250 to 300,000 transactions each day, that equates to at least 91 million shipments per year, the impact of rethinking the way they ship things would be just staggeringly beneficial.