Amazon claims four guiding principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence and long-term thinking.
Through the company’s focus on waste diversion in its operations, transitioning away from single-use plastics to paper in its delivery packaging where possible and developing biobased plastics that can be recycled or composted when using plastics is unavoidable, Amazon is acting on these principles while also working toward its commitment to achieve net-zero carbon emissions across its global operations by 2040 as part of its 2019 co-founding of The Climate Pledge with Global Optimism.
To minimize waste, which includes everything from the infrastructure used in its operations to the products sold online and in its grocery stores, the company uses data to identify the highest-impact opportunities. It then follows a three-step approach to minimize waste that involves prevention, reduction and reuse.
For the waste that cannot be avoided, recycling and composting are prioritized over energy recovery, with waste treatment and disposal representing the company’s least favored disposal option.
While that framework might sound simple, Amazon says significant effort and innovation are needed to create practical, scalable solutions across its various businesses and thousands of sites.
Inside its operations
Through its sustainability efforts in 2024, Amazon diverted 85 percent of the waste generated in its internal operations from landfill, an incremental improvement from the 84 percent rate it achieved in 2023 and 3 percentage points more than the 82 percent rate achieved in 2022. Of that 85 percent, Amazon says 83 percent was recycled or composted, while 2 percent of the company’s waste was incinerated with energy recovery last year.
Cardboard, or old corrugated containers, and wood make up 65 percent of Amazon’s waste footprint, and they are nearly 100 percent recycled, according to the company.
Justine Mahler, Amazon’s director of technical product management, waste, water and biodiversity, tells Recycling Today that the variety of items Amazon handles and its global scale make waste management complex and challenging, adding that the company relies on strong partnerships to realize its goals.
She says Amazon works with more than 350 service providers on recycling solutions across its operations for items that include personal protective equipment (PPE), pallets, stretch wrap and the industrial equipment the company uses in its fulfillment centers.
Jill Philips Ortega, general manager of Amazon’s BFI3 fulfillment center in DuPont, Washington, roughly 50 miles south of the company’s corporate headquarters in Seattle, says even safety shoes generated at BFI3 and other sites are recycled or reused through Soles4Souls, a nonprofit with U.S. locations in Texas, Tennessee, Colorado and California.
Mahler says where and how recycling solutions are implemented in Amazon’s operations are critical to their success, noting the placement of the PPE recycling station next to the employee exit during a late June site visit. Amazon works with New Jersey-based TerraCycle to recycle the high-visibility vests and gloves its associates generate.
New material recycling mechanisms must fit in as seamlessly as possible given the scale and speed of Amazon’s operations. For example, the company delivered at its fastest speeds ever for Prime members globally in 2024, with over 9 billion items delivered the same or next day.
In its fulfillment centers, Amazon uses color-coded bins to capture OCC and stretch wrap generated by its operations, baling these materials on-site.
Amazon also recycled 16 percent more label backing in 2024 in North America, Mahler says, achieving this in collaboration with RafCycle by UPM Raflatac. The recycled material ultimately is processed into building insulation and coffee cups.
In Japan, Amazon works with a vendor to recycle this material into toilet paper, increasing recycling by 50 percent from 2023 to 2024.
Despite these successes, Mahler says Amazon is exploring eliminating label backing eventually.
By using what it calls GoCarts, or reusable wheeled carts, to transport outgoing packages in its trucks, Amazon avoided 85 million disposable wood pallets last year across its fulfillment centers, Philips Ortega says, as well as the emissions associated with operating forklifts to handle the pallets.
The company is leveraging reuse in other areas, including developing mechanisms that connect unused assets across its sites to another site or to a charity, allowing Amazon to repurpose 310,000 assets and materials in 2024.
For example, 5,000 unused assets that included first aid supplies and shelving were donated to Fundación Altius to support disaster relief efforts and affected communities in Valencia, Spain, following floods, according to Amazon.
Before removing overstock from inventory, Amazon tries to sell it at a discount through Amazon Outlet, while Whole Foods Market works with Too Good To Go, an app that enables customers to purchase surplus food at discounted prices. In 2024, the company sold 68 million retail sellers’ items via Amazon Outlet and diverted the equivalent of 636,000 meals through Too Good To Go in the U.S.
Additionally, Amazon MGM Studios launched its first Reusable Asset Hub in North America in 2024, which houses production items ranging from electronics to furniture that can be reused for future Amazon productions. Nearly 15 productions have benefited from this resource, including “Countdown,” “Criminal” and “Buy It Now,” Amazon says.
The company also has introduced online shopping features, including artificial intelligence- (AI-) generated customer review summaries, “Frequently returned item” and “Customers usually keep this item” badges and clothing size recommendations to help customers make more informed purchasing decisions, which can help reduce returns.
The company says it continues to find ways to prevent, reduce, reuse and recycle or compost, innovating where solutions don’t exist. An example is the bioplastic packaging solutions it’s developing in its Sustainable Materials Innovation Lab.
Innovating biobased plastics
When it comes to the packaging materials used at Amazon, the company has prioritized curbside recyclable materials, which has led to its phaseout of plastic in favor of paper-based packaging whenever possible.
However, not all plastic can be eliminated, notably in food packaging.
That fact led Amazon to join the BOTTLE (Bio-Optimized Technologies to keep Thermoplastics out of Landfills and the Environment) Consortium, led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
Through this consortium, Amazon has helped develop what Alan Jacobsen, director of materials and energy sciences at Amazon, describes in a March 2022 Amazon Science article as “an energy-efficient chemical processing technology that can break down or deconstruct a mixed waste stream of plastics with labile bonds (i.e., bonds that are easy to deconstruct) into valuable feedstock that can be used to make the same types of plastics (closed-loop recycling) or new plastics altogether (open-loop recycling).” They also can biodegrade in natural environments if they don’t make it to the recycling stream.
In a late June visit to his lab, Jacobsen tells Recycling Today that Amazon, its grocery stores and its partners, which include material scientists, a recycling technology startup and biomaterials producers, are demonstrating how to prove out a new value chain for plastics derived from renewable resources that are easily recycled while also being biodegradable.
The team focused on polyester-based biodegradable plastics, which contain carbon-oxygen ester bonds that are easier to break down than the carbon-carbon bonds found in polyolefins, such as polyethylene or polypropylene. Jacobsen says solvolysis techniques, such as methanolysis and glycolysis, being developed for polyethylene terephthalate (PET) could be applied to other polyesters, such as polylactic acid (PLA) or polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), that are biodegradable.
While Amazon’s work with NREL is targeting flexible films because they present the biggest recycling challenge today, having a separate recycling stream for each new type of biopolyester plastic would not be practical nor economical, he says, nor would it solve the problem of recycling blends and multilayered materials.
PLA is a contaminant in the PET recycling stream currently, and its compostability is related to its form factor, with film breaking down more easily than rigid packaging, Jacobsen says.
However, if this material and other biopolyesters were collected with PET thermoformed containers, they could be chemically recycled using methanolysis, which he says “can transform the carbon we have into the carbon we want.”
The consortium led to the establishment of EsterCycle, a Golden, Colorado-based startup founded by a collaborator at NREL, Julia Curley, that has developed technology that uses low-energy methanolysis processes with an amine catalyst to selectively break the ester bonds that form these polymers.
For EsterCycle to commercialize its technology, however, a reliable supply of materials to process is needed. Amazon called on its partnership with Glacier Technologies to assist in this area.
Glacier, which Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund invested in last year, uses AI-powered robots to sort recyclables and collect real-time data on recycling streams. The companies launched a trial at a San Francisco material recovery facility to test how Glacier’s AI vision and robotic systems could identify and sort biopolyester packaging, learning that packaging design greatly influences AI detection. Glacier’s AI identified packaging with consistent, visible features 99 percent of the time, Jacobsen says, though lookalike materials and inconsistent designs led to higher rates of misidentification.
Amazon also is testing and trialing these biopolyesters in real-world applications, including produce bags made with Novamont’s Mater-Bi material in Amazon Fresh stores in Seattle. Shelf-life testing shows the bags performed similarly to conventional plastic bags in keeping produce fresh for the first week after purchase. Different types of produce showed varying results in longer-term storage, which Amazon is working with materials developers to improve, Jacobsen says.
Other innovations
Other Amazon packaging innovations have focused on traditional materials and waste reduction designed to improve the customer experience.
Innovations are tested at Amazon’s BF1 fulfillment center before being deployed, with associates providing feedback.
Josh Samples, Amazon senior manager and global field lead for Mechatronics & Sustainable Packaging, says deployability is considered with new innovations.
“We’re here to accelerate ideas,” he says. “Sometimes that’s into the ground.”
Amazon introduced Ships in Product Packaging (SIPP, formerly Ships in Own Container) in 2015 for its first-party products. As of 2024, the company expanded SIPP to all sellers using Fulfilled by Amazon, giving them the opportunity to test and qualify products to ship to customers in their brand packaging without any Amazon-added material. The testing subjects the packaging to 17 different drop tests, Samples says.
The company says SIPP provides a better customer experience by minimizing the packaging materials used for delivery while also reducing the costs associated with fulfillment and potentially lowering the carbon footprint of shipments.
Twelve percent of Amazon’s shipments in 2024 were SIPP, according to Senior Manager of Mechatronics & Sustainable Packaging John Sly.
The company’s transition away from plastic bubble mailers to paper-based mailers began in 2019 with the introduction of the paper padded mailer.
In 2023, Amazon’s Euclid, Ohio, fulfillment center became the first to convert to solely paper-based packaging. Machines scan items to create a mailer that is the right size for the shipment, reducing air and using less packaging.
Amazon began introducing a new version of its right-sized cardboard box technology in 2024. Sly says the packaging material removes one layer of liner from the corrugated medium, reducing weight. Sensors on the machine measure the dimensions of the item being shipped to create a custom box on-site.
The technology is used to ship items that require more protection than a padded paper mailer can provide.
At its manual packaging stations, Amazon provides associates with suggestions for how to pack orders, but Samples says associates have the final say on how items are shipped and are encouraged to give feedback to further optimize packaging.
Whether reducing and recycling its internal waste or ensuring the packaging its customers receive is more readily recyclable, Amazon plans to continue to take steps to reduce the environmental footprint of its packaging and operations.
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