The online retailer Amazon wants to largely dispense with plastic packaging for shipping in the future. This applies both to products that the US group sells itself and to goods that external dealers send via its shipping service. The conversion should be completed by the end of the year, as announced by the German Amazon headquarters. Smaller deliveries should be made in paper-based mailers and bags, only larger items in corrugated cardboard boxes.
In recent years, environmental organizations have accused Amazon of producing too much plastic waste with its packaging and thus being jointly responsible for the pollution of the oceans. According to an analysis by the Cologne retail institute EHI 2020, the company was by far the market leader in German online mail order, followed by Otto and Zalando.
According to the announcement, Amazon wants to make the packaging more sustainable by using as large a proportion of easily recyclable materials as possible. However, plastic packaging is not being banned completely. One of the possible exceptions concerns bubble wrap for fragile items like glass. If manufacturers deliver their products in "suitable one-way plastic bags", Amazon also says they want to use these bags for onward shipping.
Plastic packaging isn't the only thing environmentalists criticize about Amazon's business practices. A few months ago, researcher revealed that Amazon was shredding new items that were returned. Last year, Amazon employees collected including the Vorwurf that the company think tanks financiers who deny climate change.
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