- Amazon said nearly all deliveries in North America no longer have plastic air pillows inside.
- This change avoids 15 billion air pillows a year, Amazon's biggest plastic reduction effort yet.
- Companies are under pressure to reduce single-use plastics that pollute the environment.
Nearly all Amazon deliveries in North America no longer include plastic air pillows, the e-commerce giant said on Thursday.
Amazon said the change would avoid some 15 billion air pillows — the company's largest reduction in plastic packaging to date. Instead, Amazon is using a paper filler made from 100% recycled material that customers can recycle at home as part of a broader effort to eventually eliminate all plastic packaging from North American fulfillment centers. Amazon already met that goal in Europe this year.
The switch to recycled paper comes as companies and governments are under pressure to phase out single-use plastics that are piling up in landfills and contributing to the climate crisis. The vast majority of plastics are made from oil and gas, can't be recycled, and degrade into tiny particles that leach into the air and environment. Scientists have found those microplastics in human blood along with organs including the liver, heart, lungs, and most recently testicles, but the effects on our health are still being studied.
For years, Oceana, a nonprofit that advocates for protecting oceans, has criticized Amazon's ballooning plastic footprint as the company ships billions of packages around the world. Matt Littlejohn, Oceana's senior vice president, told Business Insider that eliminating air pillows indicated Amazon was serious about its plastic-reduction efforts in North America and that it was welcome news for oceans. Plastic air pillows are made with a film that's commonly found littering marine areas.
Oceana recently estimated that Amazon generated more than 94,000 metric tons of plastic-packaging waste in the US alone in 2022, a 9.6% increase over the previous year. That's enough to circle the Earth more than 200 times in the form of air pillows, Oceana said.
Amazon disputes Oceana's figures and reported a lower amount of plastic packaging across its global operations in 2022: Nearly 86,000 metric tons, an 11.6% decrease from the previous year.
Oceana said its estimates were higher than Amazon's because the company hadn't accounted for orders sent by third-party sellers. Those independent sellers account for more than 60% of Amazon's sales. Amazon's plastic-packaging data reflects orders shipped through its own fulfillment centers — which some independent sellers opt for — and through its grocery business. The data also isn't broken down by country.
"The first thing for us is to really test and learn and then scale what we can control within our own facilities," Pat Linder, Amazon's vice president of mechatronics and sustainable packaging, told BI. "That's been our focus."
Linder pointed to an Amazon fulfillment center in Cleveland that last year became the first to eliminate plastic delivery packaging and replace it with paper that's curbside recyclable. The effort involved rebuilding existing machines that were using plastic to package products. Additionally, As well as being more sustainable, the recyclable paper is better at protecting orders from damage, Linder said.
He added that Amazon would disclose the impact of these changes on the company's plastic use in a future sustainability report.
That report is also set to detail Amazon's broader climate strategy. The company aims to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2040 while boosting sales and building more data centers that demand vast amounts of electricity.
In 2022, Amazon's carbon footprint dropped by 0.4% from the previous year, although it was still higher than in 2019, the first year Amazon reported its emissions.