Amazon has replaced 95% of the plastic air pillows from delivery packaging in North America with paper filler, working toward full removal by the end of the year.
The removal of 95% of our plastic air pillows is another step in Amazon path to avoid and reduce packaging—It is also part of its multi-year effort to remove plastic delivery packaging from North America fulfillment centers. This will be Amazon’s largest plastic packaging reduction effort in North America and will avoid nearly 15 billion plastic air pillows annually.
“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 U.S. automated fulfillment center in Ohio to eliminate plastic delivery packaging, including the transition from plastic air pillows to paper filler. This work in Ohio allowed us 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, Amazon teams collaborated with suppliers to source paper filler made from 100% recycled content, while also coordinating the transition across hundreds of 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.
In 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 customers to recycle at home, and made from 100% percent recycled content.
This effort builds on Amazon’s ongoing investment in reducing packaging and increasing curbside recyclability across all of their operations, while ensuring products get to customers undamaged. This includes programs we’ve invested in for many years—like our work to ship items without any additional packaging. In 2022, 11% of all packages shipped by Amazon globally were without added Amazon delivery packaging through their Ships in Product Packaging program, They test and certify products to ensure they can safely ship in their own packaging.
They too working to invent new materials and recycling solutions that keep both our customers and the environment in mind. For example, Amazon has teamed up with the U.S. Department of Energy to bring new materials and recycling programs to life. They too piloting new technology with Glacier, a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics company, to use AI-powered robots to automate the sorting of recyclables and collect real-time data on recycling streams for companies—which can help reduce landfill waste and increase the use of recycled materials in packaging.
