Amazon says it’s reduced its use of single-use plastic over the past year, but an environmental group says it’s up nearly 20%
A report by environmental group Oceana found that plastic waste from Amazon packaging has increased by 18% over the past year, but Amazon says it has reduced the use of single-use plastic across its network.
Amazon’s plastic waste rose to 709 million pounds last year from 599 million pounds in 2020, according to estimates by Oceana released on Thursday – an amount that can circle the planet in the form of air cushions more than 800 times, the said Group.
For years, the advocacy group has been pushing the company to release more data on its plastic footprint and to commit to reducing any harmful environmental impact that might result. This idea has been put to the vote at Amazon’s annual shareholder meetings twice in the past two years. The last vote in May was supported by 48% of shareholders.
But the e-commerce giant had defied calls for more data until Tuesday, when it revealed in a blog post that it had used 97,222 tonnes (over £214million) of single-use plastic to ship orders to customers last year . Amazon also said it was able to reduce the average weight of plastic in a shipment by over 7%, but didn’t disclose whether its overall plastic footprint grew between 2020 and 2021, when it lost a shipment due to the pandemic experienced a sales boom.
“While we’re making progress, we’re not satisfied,” the company said in the blog post. “We must work to further reduce packaging, particularly plastic packaging which is harder to recycle, and we are taking a number of initiatives to do so.”
Matt Littlejohn, senior vice president of strategic initiatives at Oceana, said it’s good that Amazon released some data, but the numbers released don’t tell the whole story.
The company’s aggregate data includes plastic used in shipments that Amazon ships through its warehouses and other parts of its business like Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh. But it omits what’s used by third-party sellers who sell items on Amazon but don’t use the company’s fulfillment services.
Saige Kolpack, a spokesman for Amazon, said the company’s data reflects most of the plastic used to ship orders to customers, as the “substantial majority” of items shipped are fulfilled by Amazon. Kolpack declined to say how many of the nearly 2 million merchants who sell on Amazon use its fulfillment services.
The company has also said it offers incentives to get third-party providers to ship items to customers in the manufacturer’s original packaging, rather than using additional packaging.
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