Inside Amazon's Push to Reduce Packaging Waste
Amazon steps up its commitment to packaging sustainability across Europe, with a wave of automation set to reshape how the ecommerce giant handles deliveries.
In 2022, each person in the European Union generates an average of 186.5kg of packaging waste.
To address that, Amazon plans to install hundreds of automated packaging machines in its facilities across the continent. This rollout marks the company's largest European investment to date in sustainable packaging.
Redesigning packaging from the inside
Amazon’s approach hinges on making packaging smaller, lighter and easier to recycle. Its efforts now stretch across the company’s logistics and supply chain operations.
By focusing on less packaging per order and using more recyclable materials, Amazon aims to cut both waste and carbon emissions.
The company's strategy is guided by a science-based model aimed at reducing environmental impact without compromising delivery efficiency.
In 2023, the company says it cut more than 446,000 tonnes of packaging, having already reduced the average packaging weight per shipment by 43% since 2015. That brings Amazon’s total packaging reduction to over three million tonnes – roughly the same weight as 285 Seattle Space Needles.
Plastic waste is also falling. Since 2020, the company has eliminated 80,500 tonnes of single-use plastic from its operations.
In Europe specifically, single-use plastic delivery bags have been phased out in favour of recyclable paper and cardboard. This change alone has helped Amazon avoid using more than one billion plastic bags since 2019.
Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer Kara Hurst says: “Amazon's primary focus is to decarbonise our global operations through our transition to renewable energy, building with more sustainable materials and electrifying our delivery fleet and global logistics.
"We are also pursuing changes such as reducing the weight of packaging per shipment for our customers. At the same time, we also need to seek every possible avenue to reduce carbon in the atmosphere.”
By 2023, 12% of all global orders were shipped without any added Amazon packaging. Instead, the company used its existing lightweight options – mailers and bags – for over half of its deliveries in the US, Canada and Europe. These mailers are up to 89% lighter than boxes, and reduce the volume of material and fuel used during transportation.
Automating for precision and scale
Amazon is now scaling up its packaging automation. The new packaging machines are part of a broader plan to make order fulfilment smarter and more sustainable. Each machine uses sensors to size and wrap packages more efficiently, avoiding unnecessary packaging materials.
In the US, more than 120 packing machines have already been retrofitted to create paper bags made to fit each order. This move alone helped Amazon avoid using 130 million plastic bags in 2023. The same technology is now rolling out across other regions, including Europe, with the aim of reducing packaging waste further.
The company’s ‘Ships in Product Packaging’ programme is another pillar of this push. It enables select products to be delivered in their original manufacturer’s packaging, cutting out Amazon’s own packaging entirely.
Since 2019, more than five billion of these shipments have been sent across North America and Europe.
In 2024, nearly four million seller products have been certified for the programme. That number continues to grow in Japan and Australia, showing how the approach is expanding across Amazon’s global marketplace.
Tying packaging to renewable energy
Packaging is just one part of Amazon’s broader environmental strategy. The company is also pouring investment into renewable energy to power its operations.
In 2022 alone, Amazon added 8.3GW of renewable energy through 133 new projects in 11 countries. Its total capacity now exceeds 20GW – enough to power 5.3 million US homes per year.
The renewable energy portfolio includes 401 wind and solar projects across 22 countries, along with rooftop installations at Amazon sites. The expansion sets a corporate record for the most renewable energy capacity announced in a single year.
“Increasing the amount of renewable energy on Europe’s electricity grids is the fastest and cheapest way to help Europe’s economy decarbonise at scale and fight against climate change,” says Lindsay McQuade, Director of Energy for EMEA at Amazon.
“As Europe’s top corporate investor in renewable energy, we will continue to work with governments, industry and communities to unlock more of Europe’s renewable energy potential.”
In India and Japan, Amazon is also cutting back on plastic in its packaging processes. As of October 2024, the company has removed all plastic air pillows from its delivery packaging and replaced them with filler made from 100% recycled paper.
As Amazon continues to change its packaging and logistics processes, it frames sustainability not as a trade-off, but as a path to smarter operations. With new machines, lighter packaging and more renewables in the mix, the company says it is building a more efficient supply chain – one box at a time.
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