Amazon has replaced 95% of the plastic air pillows from delivery packaging in North America with paper filler, working toward full removal by 2024-end, the company announced. The removal of 95% of the plastic air pillows is a step to avoid and reduce packaging—and part of its multi-year effort to remove plastic delivery packaging from North America fulfillment centers.
To date, this will be Amazon’s largest plastic packaging reduction effort in North America and will avoid nearly 15 billion plastic air pillows annually. “For Prime Day this year, nearly all of our customer deliveries will not contain plastic air pillows,” the company posted on its website.
Amazon says it wants to ensure that customers receive their items undamaged, while using as little packaging as possible to avoid waste, and prioritizing recyclable materials.
“I’m proud of the cross-Amazon collaboration to make a positive impact on the customer delivery experience with easier to recycle materials. It’s a great example of how we thoughtfully test and scale new solutions to protect our customer experience,” said Pat Lindner, VP of Mechatronics and Sustainable Packaging. “We are working towards full removal in North America by end of year and will continue to innovate, test, and scale in order to prioritize curbside recyclable materials.”
Last October, Amazon announced its first US automated fulfillment center in Ohio to eliminate plastic delivery packaging, including the transition from plastic air pillows to paper filler. This work in Ohio, the company says, allowed it to test and learn and move quickly on transitioning to paper filler for 95% of its shipments in less than a year.
To achieve this, the teams collaborated with suppliers to source paper filler made from 100% recycled content, while coordinating the transition across hundreds of its fulfillment centers. This included working with thousands of employees to change machinery as well as to host employee trainings for these new systems and machines.
“Through our testing of paper filler—which included an assessment by a third-party engineer lab—we discovered that it offers the same, if not better, protection to products than plastic air pillows. The paper filler is also curbside recyclable, making it easier for our customers to recycle at home, and made from 100% percent recycled content,” it posted.
This effort builds on Amazon’s ongoing investment in reducing packaging and increasing curbside recyclability across all of its operations, while ensuring products get to customers undamaged. In 2022, 11% of all packages shipped by Amazon globally were without added Amazon delivery packaging through its ‘Ships in Product Packaging Program’, where it tests and certifies products to ensure they can safely ship in its own packaging.
