What Not To Do On Cyber Monday (if you give a shit about humanity)
SO- the day after tomorrow is the kick-off of the online binge-shopping season, and we have some thoughts about that.
Did you know that pound for pound and mile for mile, flying produces 10x more carbon dioxide emissions than ground transit? (Yes, those are the same emissions causing rapid global warming).
If you’re feeling powerless about this, choosing *not* to have your Cyber Monday deals shipped via prime shipping is a great (and easy) place to start: ground shipping keeps those purchases on the ground rather than launching them through the sky in your direction.
You could also choose not to buy a bunch of stuff, but hey: we’re here to offer help, not judgment.
For more about how Junket is working to shift both the culture and available options, read on:
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Junket’s entire premise is that secondhand goods have the potential to support a widespread social transition to low-carbon living and the climate stability we desperately need to establish.
We see our role as supporting this transition as Americans begin to connect the dots between human-generated emissions and extreme weather in the wake of the October 2018 IPCC report on Global Warming, the catastrophic fires in California that immediately followed, and the US Climate Report released on November 23rd.
We are currently in the process of populating our online site with products that already exist (secondhand goods). As we launch, we are choosing to ship exclusively via ground shipping (and, when necessary, sea freight) because putting products on airplanes generates roughly 10x more carbon dioxide emissions than putting the same products on a truck. We ship using secondhand packaging for similar reasons: the most sustainable materials possible are the ones that already exist.
That we ship at all – and that we have chosen to expand our market beyond Minneapolis via online sales – is based on several years of data gathering and analysis that have led us to understand – intimately and unequivocally – that the most sustainable goods are the ones that already exist – even when those goods are well traveled.
While these may not be the most immediately profitable or easy solutions for our business, we’ve never been cowed by challenge, and we take seriously our mission to not only provide but to ethically deliver the most sustainable products possible.
Sometimes, these stringent & sustainable practices require more work, so we build in some extra time to make sure we manage to our top priority (sustainability), and we trust that our audience is sensitive to this priority, as well.
In addition, our commitment to avoiding flight emissions when shipping eliminates some of the less-expensive options. While it’s safe to conclude that products leaving Minneapolis for Madison won’t wind up on a Boeing, we don’t have the same certainty beyond a certain radius; ground shipping beyond our little corner of the Midwest starts around $8.
With this in mind, a $10 flat shipping strategy outside of MN & WI makes it possible for us to reach a broader audience while training site visitors to consider grouping their purchases for efficiency and cost savings.
We’re confident that we’re not alone in taking carbon emissions seriously, and that helping our audience understand the hard costs of making ethical decisions like these will help to drive widespread support for systemic change.
About our turnaround times:
Because we rely on our own sourcing for secondhand shipping materials (which aren’t always available at the click of a button), we build some extra time into our service levels. If getting your order out the door more quickly would be helpful to you, please let us know and we’ll be glad to expedite the handling process to the extent we can do so in house. We will not, however, expedite or overnight packages out of concern for any related emissions output.
Local pick-up is always an option for those residing in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Please select the option at checkout if this is your preference. We will respond to your order with retrieval date and time options.
Thank you for working with us as we flex within the constraints of a system that was built without regard for the metes and bounds of our planet’s environmental capacity. This is our future, and we’re excited about leading the way.