With the holiday and gift giving season behind us, it’s a good time to reflect on our online shopping habits and how they affected the planet. As we enjoy our new gifts, it’s sobering to think of packaging waste such as plastic mailers and bubble wrap adding to landfill or ending up in oceans. This is a concern not only for the oceans and the creatures that live there, but increasingly for human health as we consume plastic in the foods we eat.
Our concerns about plastic and packaging usually point to online retailers, especially one of the world’s biggest: Amazon.
The Lonely Whale and Point Break Foundation claim that by 2025, there will be one metric tonne of plastic for every 3 tonnes of fish in the ocean. Similarly, the United Nations estimates that by 2015 there will be more plastic waste than fish.
Online retail is a leading contributor to the problem. A report from ocean advocacy organization Oceana estimates that Amazon was responsible for 465 million pounds of plastic packaging waste in 2019. While Amazon disputes the numbers in the report, it does admit to using more than 116 million pounds of plastic packaging that year.
Even if consumers diligently recycled as much packaging as possible (only 9% of the world’s plastics are recycled globally), an analysis by Closed Loop Partners’ Center for the Circular Economy shows that the U.S. and Canada are sending 11.5 million metric tons of plastic packaging to landfill every year, with the recycling system currently only capturing 18% of packaging.
What is Amazon doing to address these problems?
Packaging Waste
To reduce packaging waste, Amazon has developed frustration-free packaging and uses a recyclable mailer for some shipments. It has begun to ship products in their own packaging, not Amazon’s cardboard boxes.
According to Amazon’s website, “Since 2015, they have reduced the weight of outbound packaging by more than 33% and eliminated over 900,000 tons of packaging material—that is the equivalent of 1.6 billion shipping boxes.”
While these are small steps, Amazon has committed to tackling climate change in two big ways.
Bezos Earth Fund
Last winter, Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos announced the Bezos Earth Fund, a $10 billion commitment to fighting climate change. So far, the Earth Fund has pledged $791 million in funding to scientists, nonprofits and “others” that have made it their life’s work to fight climate change.
Here is the list of grantees.
The Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund, ClimateWorks Foundation, Dream Corps Green For All, Eden Reforestation Projects, Energy Foundation, Environmental Defense Fund, The Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, NDN Collective, Rocky Mountain Institute, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, The Solutions Project, Union of Concerned Scientists, World Resources Institute and World Wildlife Fund.
Five of the organizations chosen for the grants focus on climate change through environmental justice. Three of them — the Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund, The Solutions Project and The Hive Fund — are receiving $43 million each.
The NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led group that received $12 million will use its grant to help advance climate solutions at the state and community level. The Nature Conservancy is using a large proportion of its funds to protect the Emerald Edge old-growth forest in the U.S. and Canada in collaboration with Indigenous and tribal communities who live there.
Funding for ocean conservation and carbon sequestration also featured among the initial grantees. The Salk Institute is getting $30 million for its Harnessing Plants Initiative, which is focused on soil sequestration.
WWF is using its funding to protect and restore mangroves forests in Colombia, Fiji, Madagascar and Mexico. It also includes funds for seaweed farming which can suck up vast amounts of carbon as it grows.
After these initial groups of projects, the Earth Fund still has another $9 billion to allocate to climate change, which is not an insubstantial amount of money.
Climate Pledge
To help green its own operations, Amazon has joined the Climate Pledge, Paris 10 years early, along with 31 other companies including Microsoft, JetBlue, Coca Cola and Uber to achieve the Paris Climate Accord objectives of net zero carbon emissions by 2040, instead of 2050.
In the meantime, it is stepping up its renewable energy plans. Through recent investments in 127 solar and wind projects, Amazon expects to power 100% of its operations through renewable energy by 2025. It also has plans to reduce the carbon footprint of its shipments by 50% through investments that support sustainable aviation.
As the world’s biggest retailer, Amazon has a responsibility to tackle its carbon footprint. While your organization may not be as big, it has a similar responsibility to consider shifting to renewable sources of energy, working with sustainable suppliers, and making sustainable, long-term choices.
For help in greening your organization, contact us for a free consultation.