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What just happened? Amazon says it has reached its goal of eliminating plastic air pillows from its warehouses and distribution facilities globally. The familiar packaging has now been replaced with paper filler, which the company says is not only better for the environment, but also offers the same, if not better, protection for fragile goods.
Amazon has spent years working toward the goal of removing plastic delivery packaging from fulfillment centers and focusing on using recycled materials. In June, it announced that it had reduced the use of plastic air pillows in its packages by 95% in North America as it switches to crumpled paper. Amazon had already eliminated the pillows across its European facilities in 2022, in Australia in 2021, and in India in 2020.
In a recent post, Amazon confirmed that as of October 2024, it has removed all plastic air pillows from delivery packaging used at the company's global fulfillment centers.
The packaging paper Amazon uses is curbside recyclable so customers can recycle it at home, and it's made from 100% recycled content. The tech giant also says that its testing, which included assessment by a third-party engineering lab, shows that the paper's ability to protect goods is as good as or better than the air pillows.
While the removal of the air pillows doesn't apply to orders shipped by third-party sellers, nonprofit ocean advocacy group Oceana has welcomed the announcement.
"The fact that the world's largest e-commerce company has made plastic air pillows history globally is fantastic news for the world's oceans," said Matt Littlejohn, senior vice president of strategic initiatives at Oceana. The group says plastic film is the deadliest type of plastic for large mammals such as whales and dolphins. It's also the most prolific type of plastic litter near coastlines.
Oceana found that Amazon generated 599 million pounds of plastic packaging waste in 2020, a 29% increase over the 2019 estimate of 465 million pounds. The estimated plastic waste, in the form of air pillows alone, could circle the Earth more than 600 times.
Amazon still uses tons of plastic annually in other forms of packaging like delivery bags and padded mailers. It says two-thirds of shipments in North America included Amazon-added plastic delivery packaging in December 2023. By December 2024, it aims to reduce this to a third. The company has retrofitted more than 120 automated packing machines that made plastic bags to create made-to-fit paper bags across the US, helping avoid the use of more than 130 million plastic bags this year.
Amazon employees staged a walkout in 2023 over the company's return-to-work policy and their displeasure at its impact on the environment. They stated that Amazon was failing to meet its self-imposed goals of reaching zero emissions by 2040.