Too much plastic: Why Amazon’s packaging needs to change

If you’ve ever wondered how many packages Amazon delivers, you were right: It’s a lot. Amazon delivers 1.6 million packages a day in the United States alone– that’s over 1,000 shipments per minute.

And if you’ve ever received a package from Amazon — and let’s face it, who hasn’t? — you also may have wondered: Do they have to use so much plastic? And what happens to all of those plastic padded shipping bags and envelopes and other plastic stuff?

The answers are: No. And: It’s not pretty.

A planet wrapped in plastic

Online retailers create an enormous amount of plastic waste with single-use packaging that we just don’t need. Not only does the pile of plastic we’re confronted with every time we receive an online purchase seem excessive, but most of that plastic can’t be recycled. Plastic packaging, including plastic shipping envelopes, bubble wrap and foam, becomes waste as soon as the package is opened.

Multiply that by the millions upon millions of people making purchases every day through online retailers like Amazon, and you get an e-commerce packaging problem that generated 3.8 billion pounds of plastic packaging waste in 2022. A recent report estimates that 208 million pounds of that plastic packaging waste comes from Amazon alone. That amount of plastic would, in the form of plastic air pillows, circle the planet more than 200 times.

The problems with plastic

The biggest problem with plastic, of course, is also its chief selling point: It’s so durable that it lasts forever — or pretty darn close to forever, degrading ever-so-slowly (depending on its location and exposure to sunlight) into microplastics.

A small amount of the billions of tons of plastic generated since roughly 1950 gets recycled. A slightly larger amount is incinerated (which is worrisome, given the chemicals released into the air).

The rest is supposed to go to, and stay in, landfills. But it doesn’t work out that way. Instead, researchers keep finding plastic everywhere in the environment — from the deepest point in the ocean to the highest point on Earth.

They also keep finding it in animals, including seabirds, marine mammals and sea turtles. Researchers also are detecting plastic in our lungs, our blood and even the breast milk of nursing moms.

The experts are still sorting out the health and environmental effects of all of this plastic. They know that it’s harming and sometimes even killing wildlife. As they study what it might be doing to us, we could take our chances and hope that what’s happening to wildlife isn’t happening to us. Or, we could do the smarter thing, and stop producing, consuming and disposing of so much plastic, starting with the plastic we don’t really need.

Last summer, Amazon announced that it was in the process of phasing out plastic air pillows– those plastic film bags filled with air that show up with your online orders– from its shipments in North America by the end of 2024, avoiding 15 billion air pillows from being used every year. The retail giant has also committed to eliminating plastic padded shipping bags (the white envelopes with blue writing) but failed to give a specific timeline for the phase out.

Amazon’s recent commitments are steps in the right direction and can help move the industry away from wasteful single-use plastics that pollute our environment and harm public health.

But Amazon is not off the hook yet. There’s still more that the retail giant can do to stem the tide of plastic pollution.

Amazon should continue to take steps to reduce plastic including setting an ambitious deadline for phasing out plastic padded shipping bags, and eliminating the rest of the single-use plastic used in its shipments, including other plastic film and bags. 

Amazon has committed to eliminating single-use plastic packaging in Europe and eliminating all single-use plastic film in India. It should do the same here in the United States. And, eventually, Amazon should find innovative ways to move away from single-use packaging altogether.

Ask Amazon to reduce single-use plastic packaging

Amazon’s recent commitment comes on the heels of a years-long campaign from PIRG and other environmental groups who have been calling on Amazon to reduce its use of plastic packaging due to its impact on the environment and public health. In 2023, after receiving 138,000 petitions from the public, including many PIRG supporters, Amazon began making its commitments to reduce some plastic packaging from their shipments. So, it’s clear they are listening, so we need to continue pushing them to do more.

By raising our voices together, we can convince Amazon to continue to reduce its reliance on plastic packaging.

It’s the same strategy that’s worked for us before. Across the country, our supporters have helped win statewide bans on single-use plastic bags and foam cups and containers — and as a result, 1 in 3 Americans today lives in a state with such a ban.

As for Amazon, it can’t solve the plastic waste problem all by itself. Yet each time a major company commits to eliminating its plastic waste, it paves the way for another to follow suit.

Please join us in urging Amazon to reduce and phase out wasteful single-use plastic packaging.

Once we succeed in getting rid of pernicious single-use plastics, we’ll see a difference in cleaner parks, streets, beaches and waters, decreased exposure to toxic materials for humans and wildlife, and less waste choking our planet. We’ll see a cleaner, healthier and more sustainable future to leave to our children and grandchildren.