Online retail giant Amazon generated more than 465 million pounds of plastic packaging waste in 2019, according to a new report by Oceana.
An analysis of e-commerce packaging data has found that Amazon generated 465 million pounds (around 210 million kg) of plastic packaging waste last year. This is comprised of the air pillows, bubble wrap, and other plastic packaging items added to the approximately seven billion Amazon packages delivered in 2019, writes a statement.
Amazon’s estimated plastic packaging waste, in the form of air pillows alone, would circle the Earth more than 500 times.
The study also, by combining the e-commerce packaging data with findings from a recent study published in Science, estimates that up to 22.44 million pounds of Amazon’s plastic packaging waste entered and polluted the world’s freshwater and marine ecosystems in 2019, the equivalent of dumping a delivery van payload of plastic into the oceans every 70 minutes.
“The amount of plastic waste generated by the company is staggering and growing at a frightening rate,” noted Oceana’s Senior Vice President, Matt Littlejohn, in the statement.
The report discloses that the type of plastic often used in packaging by Amazon, referred to as plastic film, is effectively not recycled, despite the company’s claims of recyclability.
Photo: Kari Sullivan/ Flickr Creative Commons CC BY 2.0
