Modestly, yes — a downloaded profile skips the plastic card, the carrier it comes on, the packaging around it and the trip it takes to reach a shop
A physical SIM is a small piece of plastic on a much larger piece of plastic, in a printed cardboard sleeve, shipped to a warehouse and then to a shop. Almost all of it is thrown away in the first minute of use. An eSIM has none of that, because there is nothing to make and nothing to move.
- No card, carrier, sleeve or shrink wrap
- No freight from factory to distributor to retailer
- No spare stock printed for a shop that never sells it
- Nothing to throw away when the trip ends
It is worth keeping the claim honest: the profile still travels over a network, and the phone it lives in has a far larger footprint than any SIM card. The saving is real but small, and it is a side effect rather than a reason to buy.
The second effect is less obvious and probably larger. Because a profile can be rewritten, a phone no longer needs a SIM slot at all — and removing the slot lets manufacturers seal the case better, which tends to make a phone last longer before water or dust ends it
