As quick commerce expands globally, its minute-scale convenience drives emissions, packaging waste, and e-waste, straining regulatory and waste systems while masking environmental costs
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The global quick-commerce market, built on the promise of delivering nearly anything to one’s doorstep in minutes, is one of the fastest-growing retail sectors in the world. However, this new era of convenience is driving pollution in more ways than one: increasing transport-related emissions, proliferating single-use packaging, and generating waste and electronic waste at a scale that already overwhelms existing systems. A 2018 World Bank report estimated that annual global waste generation would surpass 2.5 billion tonnes by 2030. By 2022, it had already exceeded 2.56 billion tonnes.
The ubiquity of quick commerce and minute-scale delivery has fundamentally altered consumer behaviour. When procurement becomes effortless for consumers and costs become near-negligible, consumption accelerates, and waste generation rises alongside it. In the context of modern convenience commerce, seamless and inexpensive doorstep delivery has done more than expand consumption; it has reshaped consumer preferences and patterns irreversibly. Hyperconsumerism refers to a pattern of consumption that vastly exceeds genuine need, sustained by cultural expectations, social signalling, relentless media stimulation, and the frictionless convenience of on-demand purchasing. Ordering a soft drink, a smartphone, or a pair of headphones that will arrive within minutes was not possible even a few years ago.
Hyperconsumerism refers to a pattern of consumption that vastly exceeds genuine need, sustained by cultural expectations, social signalling, relentless media stimulation, and the frictionless convenience of on-demand purchasing.
India’s quick-commerce market illustrates this at scale. Blinkit, Zepto, and Swiggy Instamart have built a sector valued at US$3.65 billion, projected to reach US$6.64 billion by 2031. However, this is not an Indian phenomenon; ultra-fast delivery models have proliferated across Europe, North America, and Southeast Asia. What is common across geographies is the environmental toll: frequent, low-volume deliveries mean more vehicles per item, more packaging per order, more emissions per unit of consumption, and more waste generation per household than traditional retail models. Delivery-related emissions are projected to rise by over 21 percent, with delivery traffic potentially increasing by 32 percent. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) warns that global plastic waste could triple by 2060; convenient commerce is positioned to be a major driver.
Quick commerce platforms report forward delivery emissions, but they rarely account for return trips of goods sent back, replaced orders, and the transportation of discarded waste. Environmental and ecological harm occurs both during transit and at waste disposal sites: through landfill gas emissions, toxic ash from waste burning, and the leaching of contaminants into surrounding soil and groundwater. The majority of waste generated ends up in landfills, often unsegregated, where decomposition releases methane, and resulting fires produce dioxins and furans. The World Health Organization (WHO) has linked air pollution from open waste burning to respiratory disease, cardiovascular illness, and other chronic health conditions. Communities living near dump sites suffer the most, yet this aspect of quick commerce is rarely discussed.
Environmental and ecological harm occurs both during transit and at waste disposal sites: through landfill gas emissions, toxic ash from waste burning, and the leaching of contaminants into surrounding soil and groundwater.
A record 62 million tonnes of e-waste were generated in 2022 (up 82 percent from 2010) and are projected to reach 82 million tonnes by 2030, according to The Global E-Waste Monitor 2024. Finding reliable data is challenging, but current estimates indicate that only 22.3 percent of e-waste is formally recycled. The remainder in landfills leaches lead, mercury, and cadmium into soil and groundwater. In other cases, it is incinerated along with unsegregated waste, releasing hazardous PM10 concentrations and heavy metals into surrounding communities. Yet only one percent of global rare-earth element demand is currently met through e-waste recycling.
E-waste is growing at five times the rate of recycling capacity. This will have compounding effects on air and water quality, particularly in countries where waste is not exported and must be managed domestically. What ties these threads together is a set of three converging interests: consumers want convenience, platforms want growth, and governments want neither to slow down. The environmental costs are externalised—to the atmosphere, the landfills, and the communities nearest to them, which are often least responsible for them.
E-waste is growing at five times the rate of recycling capacity. This will have compounding effects on air and water quality, particularly in countries where waste is not exported and must be managed domestically.
On the platform side, route optimisation, EV fleets, and packaging mandates can meaningfully reduce per-delivery emissions. However, the more insidious damage rarely makes way to the headlines: waste itself is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. Switching to electric delivery fleets, for all their merit, cannot address this issue in any meaningful way. On the regulatory side, Extended Producer Responsibility frameworks for electronics and packaging require enforcement with real teeth. India’s e-waste rules exist, but their implementation does not match the scale of the problem. Delivery in minutes is never truly free; its environmental costs cannot be offset simply by charging an additional delivery premium. The price is deteriorating air quality, landfill overflow, and the health of those who sort and process what convenience leaves behind.
Krishna Vohra is a Junior Fellow with the Centre for Economy and Growth at the Observer Research Foundation.
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Krishna Vohra is a Junior Fellow in Climate and Energy at the Centre for Economy and Growth. His research spans across resource governance, circular economy, ...
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