Amazon announced that it continues to take measures to reduce packaging and increase the use of materials that can be easily recycled to minimize waste.
The company said it has doubled down on its commitment to providing the right-sized, easily recyclable packaging that makes sure the product arrives undamaged while minimizing its impact on the environment.
The company leverages multiple options for product shipping to optimize durability, weight, and size, including paper-based options and plastics. However, plastics are difficult to recycle, which puts them at risk of creating waste.
Although the plastic packaging Amazon uses today is recyclable, it generally requires customers to take the materials from their homes to store drop-off locations, which is an obstacle. As a result, the company is looking into alternative recycling options. It said that one of the first priorities is to eliminate the use of additional Amazon packaging altogether.
“Over the last several years, we’ve innovated and invested in technologies, processes, and materials that have helped reduce the weight of the packaging per shipment by 38 percent and eliminated the use of more than 1.5 million tons of packaging materials since 2015,” said the company in a statement.
Additionally, throughout the pandemic, Amazon continued to take steps to reduce single-use plastics in outbound packaging, reducing average plastic packaging weight per shipment by over 7 percent.
The company continues to minimize packaging where possible, leveraging machine learning to determine which products are suitable for more sustainable alternative packaging. It also introduced algorithms to help reduce packaging for multi-item deliveries, which has helped to decrease packaging sizes in roughly seven percent of packages.
To address the industry-wide challenge of reducing packaging waste, the company joined the Department of Energy’s BOTTLE Consortium to focus on plastic pollution reduction through innovations in materials and recycling. Full Story
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