Despite pledges to reduce plastic packaging, a new report from nonprofit Oceana estimates that Amazon’s plastic waste in the United States continues to grow.
In 2022 alone, the company generated 208 million pounds of plastic waste in its packaging in the United States, which Oceana says is enough waste to circle the earth in the form of plastic air pillows more than 200 times. This is an increase of nearly 10% from the amount of plastic waste generated the previous year, the report said.
Oceana said the United States is a worrying anomaly for Amazon. The e-commerce giant said that globally, the use of plastic packaging will decrease by 11.6% in 2022 compared with the previous year. But the U.S. is the company’s largest market, and Oceana believes Amazon needs to make more progress there.
“Why are American customers being left behind?”
“Why are U.S. customers being left behind?” Matt Littlejohn, Oceana’s senior vice president of strategic initiatives, said in an emailed release.
There’s not much transparency into how much plastic waste Amazon ships from one place to another. Its latest sustainability report covers 2022 but does not break down the data by country. It also does not report all plastic waste generated by orders fulfilled by third-party sellers. So Oceana relied on market data from Mordor Intelligence and Euromonitor for its analysis, then adjusted it based on Amazon’s public statements about new measures aimed at reducing waste.
in an email edgePat Lindner, Amazon’s vice president of mechatronics and sustainable packaging, called Oceana’s analysis a “misleading report that contains exaggerated and inaccurate information about our plastic packaging,” and Noting that the company has “worked for years to eliminate plastic delivery packaging from our U.S. automated fulfillment centers.” “
Plastic film bags used for packaging are generally not accepted by curbside recycling programs. Because this plastic is harder to recycle than bottles, consumers who want to keep it out of landfills and incinerators need to take it to designated recycling sites in the United States.
Last July, Amazon appeared to vaguely commit to ditching some of its iconic plastic packaging altogether. “We are phasing out refill bags containing plastic in favor of recyclable alternatives,” the company said in a sustainability report at the time. But it did not set a timetable for when that would happen.
Oceana would like to see the company phase out plastic packaging in the United States, where it is based. It also calls on Amazon to reduce the total amount of plastic packaging it uses by at least a third by the end of the century.