The path to becoming more sustainable is not simple for a company, especially if it is the size of Amazon. The 2021 sustainability report of the US giant, published recently, shows that millions of packages were delivered adopting increasingly sustainable transport solutions.
In particular, in Europe in 2021 more than 100 million sustainable packages were delivered using more than 3 thousand electric vans and other zero-emission vehicles. In addition, more than 500 thousand other packages were delivered with electric vehicles to customers in North America.
As for packaging, Amazon has created its own programme called Frustration-Free Packaging (FFP), aimed to offer more sustainable, easy to open, fully recyclable packaging to be shipped without additional protection.
At the end of 2021, more than 2 million items were eligible for the FFP programme, which made it possible to reduce the volumes of plastics by more than 30 thousand tons throughout North America. In Europe, single-use plastic bags have been replaced with recyclable paper bags and cardboard bags for orders shipped from distribution centres, while in several countries, including Italy, all single-use plastic air cushions used to protect goods during shipping have been replaced with 100% recycled and recyclable stuffing paper designed to prevent movement inside boxes and keep items safe.
Olivier Pellegrini, Director of Amazon's Customer Delivery Experience Division, commented:
It is important to both our customers and us that the packaging is easy to recycle. Abandoning the use of plastic air cushions adds just another step towards packaging that can be easily included in our customers' home recycling habits.
As early as 2015, Amazon reduced the weight of outgoing packaging by 36% for each shipment, adjusting the size of the packaging to the items in it, so as to use less material and increase the amount of recycled material used for their production.
