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  8  Data  protection 

 Data protection has been referred to in depth in the previous section.    

  Environmental and green issues related to Internet usage 

 The future state of our planet is a widely held social concern. Technology is generally seen as 

detrimental to the environment, but there are some arguments that e-commerce and digital 

communications can have environmental benefits. Companies can sometimes also make 

cost savings while positioning themselves as environmentally concerned – see  Box   4.6   . 

 

 Potentially, online shopping can also have environment benefits. Imagine a situation where 

we no longer travelled to the shops, and 100% of items were efficiently delivered to us at home 

or at work. This would reduce traffic considerably! Although this situation is inconceivable, 

online shopping is growing considerably and it may be having an impact. Research by the 

Internet Media in Retail Group ( 

www.imrg.org

 ) shows the growing importance of e-commerce 

in the UK where over 10% of retail sales are now online. In 2007 IMRG launched a Go Green, 

Go Online campaign where it identified six reasons why it believes e-commerce is green: