Environmental organisation Oceana has published its latest analysis of Amazon’s plastic packaging waste.
Using e-commerce packaging data, it finds that Amazon generated 599 million pounds (c271,700 metric tonnes) of plastic packaging waste in 2020 – a rise of 29% over Oceana’s 2019 estimate of 465 million pounds.
The report also found that Amazon’s estimated plastic packaging waste, in the form of air pillows alone, would circle the Earth more than 600 times.
By combining e-commerce packaging data with findings from a recent study published in Science, Oceana estimates that up to 23.5 million pounds (c10,660 metric tonnes) of Amazon’s plastic packaging waste entered and polluted the world’s waterways and oceans in 2020.
Put another way, it’s the equivalent of dumping a delivery van payload of plastic into the oceans every 67 minutes.
The full report “Exposed: Amazon’s enormous and rapidly growing plastic pollution problem” is available, together with press releases and Amazon’s response, on this page.
