Amazon’s plastic packaging waste grew 18% in 2021, report says

Plastic packaging waste from the web retail large Amazon ballooned to 709 million kilos globally in 2021 — equal to the burden of some 70,000 killer whales — based on a brand new report printed Thursday by the nonprofit Oceana. That’s an 18 % improve over Oceana’s estimate of Amazon’s plastic packaging for 2020, indicating a rising drawback that environmental advocates — and even Amazon’s personal shareholders — say the corporate is doing too little to deal with.

Amazon’s plastic packaging “is an issue for the world’s waterways and oceans, and it’s a difficulty they must be prioritizing,” mentioned Dana Miller, Oceana’s director of strategic initiatives and an creator of the report. If all the corporate’s plastic from 2021 have been transformed into plastic air pillows — the inflated pouches inserted in some Amazon packages to scale back shifting throughout transit — and laid facet by facet, Miller mentioned it will circle the globe greater than 800 occasions.

As the most important retailer on the planet, Amazon goes via a variety of plastic. It ships 7.7 billion packages all over the world every year, usually utilizing plastic air pillows, baggage, and protecting sleeves to cushion merchandise throughout transit. Environmental advocates say these are among the worst sorts of plastics: They will’t be recycled, and their gentle weight makes them vulnerable to drifting into the oceans, the place they kill extra massive marine mammals than every other sort of ocean particles. Because the plastics break down, they not solely leach dangerous chemical substances however can even bind with new ones within the atmosphere, posing toxicity dangers to the mussels, oysters, whales, and different animals that unintentionally ingest them.

This plastic “is just not a pleasant customer to the oceans,” Miller mentioned. Her group estimated that 26 million kilos of Amazon’s plastic waste from 2021 will finally find yourself on the earth’s oceans, rivers, and different aquatic ecosystems. 

Plastics additionally trigger hurt through the manufacturing section, emitting greenhouse gases and posing environmental justice issues. Petrochemical services that make plastics are typically sited close to disproportionately low-income communities and communities of colour,  exposing them to hazardous chemical substances which might be linked to most cancers, respiratory illness, and neurological issues. 

Traditionally, the difficult half about holding Amazon accountable for plastic air pollution has been its secrecy across the situation. The corporate has repeatedly declined to reveal its plastic packaging use, even after buyers proudly owning practically 50 % of Amazon’s shares voted in favor of a shareholder decision demanding it. Conrad MacKerron, senior vice chairman of the shareholder advocacy group that filed the decision, As You Sow, mentioned Amazon has ignored his group for the reason that vote final Could. “It’s actually appalling habits from an organization like this,” he informed Grist.

It wasn’t till this week, two days earlier than Oceana’s report got here out, that Amazon provided its personal estimate for its plastic packaging footprint. In a weblog put up, the corporate mentioned it used about 214 million kilos of single-use plastic packaging to ship orders to clients in 2021 — lower than one-third the quantity Oceana calculated.

Matt Littlejohn, Oceana’s senior vice chairman for strategic initiatives, mentioned it’s because Amazon’s estimate solely accounts for plastic packaging used for orders despatched via Amazon-owned and operated success facilities — which account for an undisclosed fraction of Amazon’s complete gross sales. (Amazon informed Grist its figures signify “nearly all of plastics used” to ship orders to its clients, and that it supplies third-party sellers “incentives” to scale back packaging.) Oceana’s estimate, against this, considers all gross sales facilitated by Amazon, together with these fulfilled via third-party sellers. 

Amazon’s reported determine “is just not instantly similar to Oceana’s estimate,” Littlejohn mentioned in a press release. To make its calculation, Oceana used publicly out there information on the quantity of plastic packaging waste from e-commerce in international locations representing Amazon’s high 9 markets and Amazon’s market share in these international locations. Assuming that Amazon’s market share is correlated with its use of plastic packaging, Oceana multiplied the 2 numbers collectively, concluding that the retailer used about 709 million kilos of plastic packaging in 2021.

“Till Amazon is absolutely clear on its company-wide use of plastic packaging,” Littlejohn continued in his assertion, Oceana’s calculation “is the very best out there estimate of the corporate’s complete plastic footprint.”

MacKerron, with As You Sow, echoed Oceana’s issues and famous that Amazon’s weblog put up nonetheless doesn’t handle requests for the corporate to set quantitative plastic-reduction targets. As an alternative, it speaks in broad phrases and highlights two initiatives the place Amazon is changing single-use plastics with paper alternate options, one among which was first introduced three years in the past.

Different options proffered by Amazon — like educating customers about waste administration and funding extra plastic assortment infrastructure — lean on plastics recycling, which specialists say won’t ever scale as much as turn into a viable answer to the plastic air pollution disaster. Nearly no U.S. curbside recycling packages settle for the sort of plastic that goes into Amazon’s plastic packaging, which means most of it have to be dumped into landfills or incinerated. Amazon tries to get round this by encouraging clients to deposit packaging at “retailer drop-off” assortment factors for plastic movie, which is ostensibly then picked up and recycled, however specialists imagine these packages are a “charade.” Not even 6 % of Amazon customers say they use them, and Oceana’s personal investigation into 186 of the U.S. and U.Ok. drop-off places that Amazon promotes on its web site revealed that not less than 41 % don’t really settle for Amazon’s plastic packaging.

Environmental advocates say Amazon is able to far more to scale back plastic waste, as evidenced by steps the corporate has already taken in different international locations. In response to a plastic elimination coverage in India, Amazon says it changed all of its single-use plastics there. For orders originating from the EU, the place the European Fee has proposed plastic discount necessities for e-commerce, Amazon has mentioned it now not makes use of single-use plastic baggage, pouches, or air cushions.

Within the U.S., environmental advocates hope laws enacted in California earlier this yr might catalyze motion from Amazon. The statewide Plastic Air pollution Producer Duty Act would require corporations working in California to slash the quantity of plastic they produce and promote by not less than 25 % between 2023 and 2032. As a result of California represents about 15 % of the U.S. financial system, Amazon is anticipated to comply with the legislation nationwide relatively than develop separate protocols for the Golden State.

Nonetheless, Oceana needs Amazon to preempt these insurance policies and scale back plastics voluntarily. “It’s the fitting factor to do,” Miller mentioned. Her group is asking on Amazon to make a company-wide dedication to scale back its worldwide plastic packaging one-third beneath 2022 ranges by 2030 — along with releasing public reviews on its complete plastic use. 

In response to MacKerron, these asks are “fairly gentle,” given the a whole bunch of different corporations — together with firms that generate enormous quantities of plastic waste, like Unilever and Mondelez — which have lengthy disclosed their complete plastic packaging use and have set targets to scale back it. (They could be failing to fulfill these targets, however their actions counsel Amazon might publish a quantitative goal if it needed to.) A brand new shareholder decision filed by As You Sow on Tuesday says Amazon is “falling behind its friends.”

Oceana’s remaining demand is for Amazon to account for and scale back the local weather impression and plastics footprint of all of the merchandise it sells on its web site. An investigation printed earlier this yr revealed that Amazon’s pledge to realize net-zero local weather air pollution by 2040 counts life cycle emissions just for merchandise with an Amazon model label, which account for simply 1 % of the corporate’s on-line gross sales. Miller mentioned it’s crucial that Amazon right this error and never replicate it within the plastic-reduction coverage that Oceana is asking for.

“Amazon ought to take accountability for the complete local weather impression of all merchandise offered via its web site and all packaging used to ship these gross sales,” Oceana says in its report. 

This put up has been up to date to incorporate further feedback from Amazon about its estimated plastic packaging use.