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Amazon Ditches Plastic Air Pillows 77

Posted by BeauHD from the thing-of-the-past dept.
Amazon has reached its goal set earlier this year to completely get rid of plastic air pillows at its warehouses by the end of the year. "As of October 2024, we've removed all plastic air pillows from our delivery packaging used at our global fulfillment centers," the e-commerce giant said in an October 9th blog post. The Verge reports: It's a welcome change following years of pressure from environmental groups to stop plastic pollution flooding into oceans. The company is still working to reduce the use of single-use plastics more broadly in its packaging. The most prolific type of plastic litter near coastlines is plastic film -- a material that makes up those once ubiquitous air pillows, according to Oceana. That film also happens to be the "deadliest" type of plastic pollution for large mammals like whales and dolphins that might ingest it, Oceana says.

The company swapped out plastic air pillows and single-use delivery bags for paper and cardboard alternatives in Europe in 2022. It also ditched plastic film packaging at its facilities in India in 2020. The US is Amazon's largest market, and the company hasn't managed to fully eliminate plastic packaging in North America just yet. It says it plans to reduce the amount of deliveries containing "Amazon-added plastic delivery packaging" in North America to just one-third of shipments by December, down from two-thirds in December 2023.
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Amazon Ditches Plastic Air Pillows More

Amazon Ditches Plastic Air Pillows

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  • A long way to go (Score:4, Informative)

    by Guspaz ( 556486 ) on Monday October 21, 2024 @09:37PM (#64883037)

    The vast majority of my small orders in Canada are still delivered in plastic Amazon mailers and not the paper mailers. It's probably a 10:1 ratio. It's not clear to me what the difficulty is. Just use less of the plastic ones and more of the paper ones.

    • Maybe the manufacturer of the paper ones can't (yet) meet the quantities needed for that?

      I mean, it's one thing for me to go out and buy something like 100 paper padded mailers, quite another for Amazon to buy hundreds of millions of them.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by ls671 ( 1122017 )

        The whole idea of shipping individually packaged and wrapped stuff to every single customer like Amazon does is a sick idea from the beginning. I never bought anything from Amazon yet. I much rather encourage the local economy. The rest they do like what is stated in this FA is just virtue signaling without any real considerable value IMHO.

        • That would be nice, but a lot of the stuff I buy from Amazon isn't available from the local economy.

          Plus,well, Amazon doesn't always ship stuff wrapped individually. If you don't want that, go for their common delivery day shipping options. I've gotten many items in a single box doing that.

          Order a dozen things with the same delivery date, normally you will get 2-3 boxes, which makes sense if they come from different warehouses.

          And 100M envelopes would be roughly 1 per household. Many may not buy from Amaz

          • That would be nice, but a lot of the stuff I buy from Amazon isn't available from the local economy.

            Exactly. In my locale at least, many of the stores only stock the things that accountants tell them to stock. Which leads to little variety and even less of the low profit items.

            And here's the kicker - after say, searching for things like obscure size bolts which I use often, I have a choice, a 60 mile round trip to a surplus store that has all the different sizes, or ordering online. Not of the local hardware big box stores have them.

            And here's the kicker - After several failed trips to find somethin

        • At least what I order from Amazon is wanted, unlike 90% of the crap that comes through my mailbox.

          What would you suggest as an alternative ? Maybe a local storefront that receives deliveries in bulk and hands them to you when you cycle down to collect them ? I suppose that could work in some circumstances but I think they already do something similar with dropboxes and returns through retailers

          They could probably also cut down on waste by limiting returns more or charging a token return fee

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by unrtst ( 777550 )

            Maybe a local storefront that receives deliveries in bulk and hands them to you when you cycle down to collect them ?

            FYI, Amazon already does that. You can have your items delivered to (just about) any Whole Foods store. They also have other dropbox locations.

            They could probably also cut down on waste by limiting returns more or charging a token return fee

            Amazon also takes returns at Whole Foods. If memory serves, you don't even need to box it up - they'll take care of a lot of that for you, and it'll all ship out from there.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by RobinH ( 124750 )
          If you go out the back of any retail store and take a look at the garbage bins, you're not going to find they're any better than Amazon. In fact stores are far less efficient. The displays and the big sale posters and everything... all that marketing material gets thrown out every few weeks. And the whole idea of having everyone drive to a store vs. a single delivery van going down your road every day and dropping off parcels at ~20% of the houses is absurd too. Paper and cardboard is highly recyclable.
          • It's not just that retail stores are less efficient in their supply chains but think about how environmentally inefficient retail is for small items. The entire 100,000 square foot place needs to be climate controlled even though most of the products being sold do not require climate control. If I want to go there and buy something like a box of pens, I've got to drive a multi-ton piece of steel just to haul me over there, make the purchase, and come home. The environmental overhead is insane.

            If I orde

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by RobinH ( 124750 )
              I agree. The economics of Amazon appears to be... if you collect $100 or so every year from the ~30% of the households in an area, you can afford to pay a driver to drive down all the streets in that area at least once every two days. It's pretty typical for a driver to deliver 200 to 300 packages a day at 150 to 200 stops. If only 15% of the houses are receiving a package every day, that's like... 1300 paying households covered by one driver? So $130,000 in Amazon prime fees per year. That'll cover th
              • Not every Amazon customer pays the "Prime" fee. Some just order occasionally and pay a shipping cost. Given Amazon's economies of scale, even without Prime membership, they would still be more efficient. Sure you have to pay for a van and somebody to drive it. But you don't have to pay for retail space. The cheapest retail I've ever heard of is $10/sq foot. Most retail is probably in the 50/sq ft. range. A 100,000 sq. ft. retail box would cost $1M-5M/year in rent depending on the location. For that
        • How are you encouraging the local economy by purchasing from big box retailers? If there are locally *made* products, such as at the farmers market et cetera, I'm delighted to buy them. But purchasing your floppy disks at Staples instead of Amazon doesn't really change anything for the local economy.
    • I've noticed about a 50/50 mix here. I assume over time it will skew more towards the paper.
  • 2 grams of plastic and air is so effective at cushioning and preventing damaged items. Yet the end waste product had almost no secondary function. Unless one likes to hear it pop.

  • Just got a plastic bubble envelope today. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Monday October 21, 2024 @09:59PM (#64883077) Homepage
    Amazon just trying to look good while sending out bubble envelopes with a great big CAN NOT BE RECYCLED symbol. Oh, what did I order? a $5 set of rubber washers that clearly needed a 9x12 plastic bubble wrap envelope... It's probably more plastic than 5 air pillows. SMH

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ksevio ( 865461 )

      Those are annoying since you can't break them down or anything. They do say they're trying to reduce those which I guess would be the paper envelopes of a similar size. Not sure what decides if it should be paper or plastic

    • I think the bigger issue here is that you ordered a $5 set of rubber washers online rather than just pulling into one of your many hardware stores you likely pass on your commute from work and picking them off the shelf.

  • If only (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dicobalt ( 1536225 ) on Monday October 21, 2024 @10:13PM (#64883103)
    there was a way to return your boxes and other packaging to Amazon...

    • Amazon would just recycle them. Why don't you do that?

      It would be nice if Amazon paid municipal taxes to offset the recycling burden their business creates at the shipping destinations. Does anyone know whether they do?

      • It may be different in the US but in the UK plastic bags like these go into unrecyclable waste, unless you collect them and take them to the special recycling points in supermarkets⦠assuming you can find one.

        • well... an awful lot of recycling centres are actually pretty good at separating out soft plastics because it turns out they are an absolute machine-clogging nightmare. This generally leaves them with a big old pile of well separated soft plastics that they don't have much to do with, because they don't recycle well.

        • I've always wonderedabout those supermarket soft plastic collections, what happens to the plastics they collect - I don't see much about it and you would think it would be a wonderful story to burnish a store's green credentials.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Having worked in a few stores with that "recycling" program, they just throw it in the main compactor when the bin on the floor gets full.

        • It may be different in the US but in the UK plastic bags like these go into unrecyclable waste, unless you collect them and take them to the special recycling points in supermarkets⦠assuming you can find one.

          I live in the US (California) and many of our supermarkets used to collect plastic bags as you described. I don't know what they did with them.

          That ended during COVID 19. Several other businesses stopped accepting recyclable materials around the same time: UPS stopped accepting reuseable packing material; Whole Foods stopped accepting wine corks (although other businesses still accept them); I'm sure I'm forgetting some other things.

    • Cardboard and aluminum cans are the only things the local recycling center accepts.

  • Jeff on his private island in Hawai ... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Enjoying the beautiful nature over there.
    The only think he cares about is finding a way to replace it with something cheaper.
    Biodegradable plastics are not on his list of solutions.

    • Enjoying the beautiful nature over there. The only think he cares about is finding a way to replace it with something cheaper.

      Why in the hell would you ever assume one of the worlds richest humans to ever live, is concerned about replacing an island paradise, with something “cheaper”? (As if he can wiggle his shaved ass and shit out real estate like that when he pleases.)

      PT Barnum got rich selling to suckers. Not by becoming one.

  • Amazon packaging is often ridiculous - giant box for mini item, stuffed with a variety of fillers some plastic some paper.
    But - sometimes the packaging is sensible and efficient without waste.
    So, why do they do it right sometimes, and retarded other times?

    From the article "The company swapped out plastic air pillows and single-use delivery bags for paper and cardboard alternatives in Europe in 2022."
    It seems they already know how to do all-fiber.
    So, why do it right in one place, but continue obscene wastefu

    • Amazon packaging is often ridiculous - giant box for mini item, stuffed with a variety of fillers some plastic some paper. But - sometimes the packaging is sensible and efficient without waste. So, why do they do it right sometimes, and retarded other times?

      It's probably because Amazon warehouse workers are similar to grocery baggers, some put in the effort despite it being a tedious dead-end job, but if effort isn't rewarded performance will tend to be poor.

    • Are they just too big, clueless, and paralyzed at this point?..Take a poll - write below what you think.

      Amazon, is one of the worlds largest companies. A “mega-corp” if you will. They could ask for Too Big To Fail protection if needed, and get it. Instantly. With that kind of corporate coddling, how much give-a-fuck do you think they need to budget for?

      To answer your question, yes, yes, and hell yes. No need for a survey when we’ve not merely seen most companies that large suffer in the exact same ways. We’ve seen damn near every company that large suffer that way.

      We should get b

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jabuzz ( 182671 )

      Not quite, I just got a box from Amazon (it was an Amazon box with Amazon logs on it) closed with plastic adhesive tape a couple of weeks ago. Which is odd because it has been almost exclusively paper adhesive tape for ages now.

  • Best Conspiracy Theory Ever (Score:5, Funny)

    by Miles_O'Toole ( 5152533 ) on Tuesday October 22, 2024 @01:36AM (#64883315)

    The Chinese used contaminated air inside bubble wrap and air pillows to spread their lab-designed viruses to the American population.

    • This was clearly an attempt at a +5 Funny. It's ridiculous that it got modded troll. The poster has no history of trolling and positive karma.

  • Almost none of what I get from Amazon with packing material needs it. Most of it isnâ(TM)t breakable. If it is breakable most of it is packed in custom cardboard that protects it from breaking. It doesnâ(TM)t even need to go in a second box, Amazon could just stick the label on the box and save paper.

    • Amazon does this sometimes. They will notify you at checkout that it ships in the manufacturer's packaging. I don't know what criteria they use to decide whether to put things in a second box. But it might be related to the return agreement they have with the manufacturer.

  • Packages shipped to US destinations won't end up with the air pillows in the ocean. The US doesn't dump waste in the ocean. I don't think Canada or Mexico do either. This is a problem in some far East countries. Not sure why Amazon bothers.

  • My guilty pleasure of popping those pillows loudly have terrorized my poor dogs for years to the point where they start cowering whenever they see me open a package (queue Sarah McLachlan music).

  • The company swapped out plastic air pillows and single-use delivery bags for paper and cardboard alternatives in Europe in 2022.

    And just where does all that paper and cardboard come from...

    Whatever happened to humans trying to save trees? Have we just totally abandoned that goal, to try and prevent trash in the ocean that the countries Amazon mostly delivers in are not even generating?

    Using up more trees inherently means removing a powerful CO2 sink.

    • Paper and cardboard are made from fast-growing trees, a very renewable resource. Taking that paper and cardboard and tossing it in a landfill is a form of carbon capture. So both "saving trees" and "CO2 sink" are bad arguments.

      Processing trees into paper is a nasty process, so if you're looking for reasons to hate this, that's one. The necessary amount of paper is also heavier than the necessary amount of plastic, which means more transport costs all around. And it probably doesn't work as well as plast

      • True after some thought it's really the paper processing that is the biggest issue here environmentally.

        However I think possibly crumpled paper is actually better than the pillows, because it conforms better to the shape of the stuff inside to protect.

        In the past Amazon has sent me something with a token air pillow thrown in with loads of extra room all around, and the item was tumbling that whole time in the package like it was in a washing machine.

        With crumpled paper it seems like they often use a bit mor

  • Is there any evidence that Amazon plastic air pillows have been flooding the oceans?

  • Oddly, I was taking a class in CPR, and the instructor faulted me for not checking the airway for, what was a plastic bag. I thought it was part of the mannequin, but it was part of the test. Anyway, we don't want kids choking on plastic bags..

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