Amazon said Thursday it has removed 95% of the plastic air pillows from its packaging in North America and will replace them with paper fillers made from 100% recycled content.
It marks Amazon's largest plastic-packaging reduction effort and will help it remove nearly 15 billion plastic pillows annually.
"We are working towards full removal in North America by end of year and will continue to innovate, test, and scale in order to prioritize curbside recyclable materials," VP of Mechatronics and Sustainable Packaging Pat Lindner said in the announcement.
The e-commerce company began transitioning away from plastic filler in October 2023 when it announced its first U.S. automated fulfillment center to eliminate plastic-delivery packaging. Amazon collaborated with suppliers to instead source paper fillers that are also curbside recyclable.
This is not the first step that Amazon has taken to reduce its packaging waste. In 2015, the company launched the Ships in Product Packaging program, an initiative designed to reduce the use of Amazon's signature brown box and instead ship products in their original packaging.
Jaker788 on June 20th, 2024 at 20:38 UTC »
Working at an Amazon in Washington as an RME tech, Washington specifically is pushing no single use plastic packaging by end of the year. We switched to paper dunnage from the air bags a month or two ago.
The biggest change though will be switching smartpac machines from plastic film to paper. These are machines that fold plastic film and cut/seal into a bag, the packer just tosses the item in the pocket and it'll make the bag. As a tech that works on the smartpac machines I both look forward to and dread the switch.
Smartpac paper in action here https://youtu.be/VTiC1ii-dcE?feature=shared
ppbkwrtr-jhn on June 20th, 2024 at 19:20 UTC »
I'm amazed those air pillows never became a conspiracy theory: Jeff puts chemicals in the packaged air to make you [insert your concern du jour].
corvus7corax on June 20th, 2024 at 19:01 UTC »
Good - the scrunched-up paper works fine instead.