What’s behind the e-commerce boom, and what makes NYC unique for deliveries? Though e-commerce has been taking off over the past decade, the COVID-19 pandemic really made it an indispensable facet of many people’s lives. As we have seen with food deliveries, people’s penchant for ordering things online instead of going to the store has not waned with the end of pandemic restrictions. It turns out that, according to this map from the Mayor’s Office for Environmental Justice, I live right next to a last-mile facility. New York City is unique for these deliveries because, due to the incredibly high price tag on retail space, many businesses have little to no storage space for their inventory. This increases the number of trucks on the road already because they must deliver to these places much more often.Then, when you take the fact that the city is so densely populated and 80 percent of households are getting a package delivered weekly, the amount of trucks coming in and out of these last-mile facilities is very high. And because they can only be sited in industrial or commercial districts, which number around two dozen in the city, communities near these districts suffer disproportionately. 

The Online Shopping Boom Comes at a Price—and Some New Yorkers Pay More Than Their Fair Share. More diesel trucks are on the streets, and their destinations are often warehouses located in historically disadvantaged areas. Inside Climate NewsLauren Dalban March 30, 2025 Package deliveries in New York City are booming, bolstered by the pandemic and online shopping, with 80 percent of households in New York City receiving a package a week, according to the Office of the Mayor. Almost 90 percent of goods are transported into or around the city by trucks, which emit fine particulate matter, also known as PM2.5, and nitrogen oxides, which can help form PM2.5. Many of them are older, heavy-duty diesel vehicles, which contribute a substantial amount of  PM2.5 pollution in urban areas. Fine particulate matter is among the most harmful pollutants, with health impacts like childhood asthma, cancer, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, and premature mortality. According to city data, long-term exposure to the pollutant contributes to an estimated 2,000 excess deaths a year, or 1 in 25 deaths, in the city. Around 14 percent of PM2.5 pollution in the city comes from traffic, and this pollution is far from evenly distributed. The poorest neighborhoods often suffer the most in this equation—the PM2.5 levels from traffic are often higher in high-poverty neighborhoods, as well as the number of hospitalizations related to this pollutant. 

To facilitate the explosion of e-commerce, more and more facilities called last-mile warehouses are going up in neighborhoods already overburdened by air pollution from traffic. These facilities take in goods from trucks coming in from across the country and sort them before they are transported to their final destination, which is usually not too far—often the “last mile” on their journey. Today, these warehouses can be constructed without the need for a permit or environmental review in eight commercial or manufacturing districts. As a result, they are clustered in neighborhoods around Newtown Creek, a small canal that separates Queens and Brooklyn, as well as Sunset Park and Red Hook in Brooklyn and Hunts Point in the Bronx. These neighborhoods are, or encompass, environmental justice areas—places that have experienced a disproportionate amount of negative impacts from environmental issues due to historical disinvestment and social inequities. The clustering of these facilities, and the subsequent increase in truck traffic, only increases the air pollution burden. But a City Council bill, a zoning amendment, and other new city initiatives may finally start to address this issue. Ultimately, however, the electrification of medium and heavy-duty trucks may be the only way to markedly reduce the air pollution levels from traffic in these areas. The city, and the country as a whole, is far from achieving that goal.

“Antiquated Zoning Regulations”.......In Sunset Park and Red Hook, neighborhoods in the Western part of Brooklyn close to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a major highway, there are at least six last-mile facilities, according to the Last Mile Coalition—an advocacy group that brings together multiple community organizations fighting for better regulation of these warehouses.“At these intersections along Third Avenue—which is a really, really dangerous avenue in Sunset Park—you have an increase in truck traffic,” said Nebraska Hernandez, the climate justice hub advocate at UPROSE, Brooklyn’s oldest Latino advocacy group. “These trucks are coming in and out of the industrial waterfront where the facilities are located, and it’s endangering the pedestrians.” Because these facilities often include concrete structures and large parking lots for trucks, they can also increase the urban heat island effect—where highly urbanized areas experience higher temperatures—according to Willis Elkins, the executive director of the Newtown Creek Alliance. The delivery of goods to businesses and homes is complicated in a city like New York, which has so little empty space. Not only are city residents ordering more online than ever before, but local businesses rarely have storage spaces, which means they receive deliveries multiple times a week to keep up with sales. 

In May 2024, the deputy mayor for housing, economic development and workforce Maria Torres-Springer, made a commitment to regulate last-mile warehouses by requiring a special permit through the City Planning Commission. “It can get at the clustering of these facilities due to antiquated zoning regulations,” said Kevin Garcia, the senior transportation planner at the Environmental Justice Alliance. “[Communities] only find out about these facilities once they’re up and operating, once they see this increase in truck traffic.” Garcia’s organization is also a member of the Last Mile Coalition, which drafted its own zoning amendment in 2022. It included a request for buffer zones around schools, parks, public housing developments and other last-mile warehouses. Currently, some of these facilities are located in Red Hook, near the largest public housing development in Brooklyn. “These trucks are coming in and out of the industrial waterfront where the facilities are located, and it’s endangering the pedestrians.” City government seeks to regulate not only the siting of new last-mile facilities, but also the indirect pollution coming from present and future warehouses. If City Council Bill 1130—which was introduced in December by Council Member Alexa Alvilés, who represents parts of Sunset Park and Red Hook—passes, then these facilities and the trucks that come and go from them would be required to make efforts to reduce their emissions. 

“The number of trucks that are coming to and from that facility would have to be accounted for, and then the warehouse operator would have to work with the city… to come up with an emissions reduction plan,” said Garcia, who supports the bill. “What we want is for these companies, these warehouse operators, to be good neighbors.” The bill could also require warehouse operators to regulate the times and methods of their deliveries—encouraging the use of already-established pollution mitigation measures like night delivery or smaller electric vans for deliveries from the facility to people’s homes.  A similar bill, dubbed the “Clean Deliveries Act,” is also working through the state legislature. But these bills are received with some skepticism by trucking companies, according to the Trucking Association of New York. Pre-2007 diesel trucks are the most polluting, and harmful to people’s health because they were sold prior to the Environmental Protection Agency’s more stringent rules on emissions, which required diesel particulate filters. Evolving EPA guidance has reduced emissions from trucks to the point that, if a business replaces a pre-2010 model year truck with a contemporary one, they can reduce negative health impacts by up to 96 percent. 

Truck Electrification—a Live Issue in New York......Though these bills offer a potential for more community input in the siting of last-mile facilities, and for pollution mitigation for trucking to these warehouses, the electrification of heavy-duty vehicles is needed to truly reduce the air pollution from trucks that burdens many New York City communities. New York has been leading the charge on incentives for this switch with policies like the Truck Voucher Incentive Program, which offers financial help for trucking businesses looking to transition to zero-emission vehicles, and the city’s Clean Trucks Program, which offers incentives for replacing the oldest and most polluting diesel trucks with less polluting, hybrid, or electric vehicles......READ ON      https://insideclimatenews.org/news/30032025/the-online-shopping-boom-comes-at-a-price-and-some-new-yorkers-pay-more-than-their-fair-share/