This report looks at how to help enable people to walk or cycle to pick up their packages and how this would help London. It recommends:

• more and better collection points – at least one within 250 metres of 90 per cent of Londoners’ homes.
• online retailers should ‘nudge’ shoppers at the checkout to choose out-of-home delivery. In our trial, Londoners who received a ‘nudge’ at the checkout about the environmental impact of home deliveries chose Click & Collect 71 per cent of the time.

What is the Active Last Mile?

The ‘last mile’ of a delivery is the journey from the depot to your front door.

Most last mile journeys are currently taken by vans, meaning each delivery is contributing to air pollution and road congestion.

The ‘active last mile’ is when the customer collects their own parcel from a collection point on foot or by bike. A collection point might be a parcel locker or high street shop.

How to encourage and enable behaviour change

Currently only a very small percentage of parcels are delivered to collection points.

Nudging shoppers

People aren’t aware of the options available to them, or the environmental impact of home deliveries.

Telling people about the environmental and convenience benefits at online checkout can encourage people to choose out of home deliveries more.

We partnered with the Behavioural Insights Team to test how customers might be ‘nudged’ to choose to Click & Collect. Londoners who received a ‘nudge’ at the checkout about the environmental impact of home deliveries chose Click & Collect 71% of the time.

More and better pickup points  

To support this behavioural change, the parcel collection and returns infrastructure in London needs to improve.

Parcel lockers should be seen as essential pieces of street furniture like bike racks, bus stops and post boxes.

Councils need support to make attractive and safe pick-up locations in residential areas possible in the current planning system. And online retailers need to work together to share pick-up locations.