Amazon is often associated with excessive consumption — and occasionally, mind-boggling packaging waste — but the retail giant sent a team of scientists on a quest to "build a better package."
Fast Company recently profiled ongoing research at Amazon's Sustainable Materials Innovation Lab in Seattle, where researchers are focused on plastic. Specifically, the team is working to develop eco-friendlier plastic, as well as to ensure "there's a recycling infrastructure already in place" to process recyclable materials.
As America's second-largest retailer, Amazon's inherently massive environmental impact can be a double-edged sword. In 2022, the brand introduced 20,000 Rivian-brand electric vehicles to its fleet of delivery vans, an act with the potential to reduce pollution at scale — but Amazon has been called out for its resource-gobbling data centers, too.
Further complicating matters is Amazon's acquisition of the supermarket chain Whole Foods in 2017 for $13.7 billion. As Fast Company noted, the merger made Amazon "a major player in food packaging as well, wrapping everything from produce to potato chips."
Placing an Amazon order is typically convenient. Amazon's Sustainable Materials Innovation Lab wants to make that the case for post-consumer waste, per lab director Alan Jacobsen.
"Our long-term objective is to enable simplicity and recycling of plastics in the same way that you have [with] paper today," he said. "You don't need to know, [if it's] a 1, 2, 3, 4. You just throw it [in a bin]."
In July, Amazon announced plans to eliminate its ubiquitous plastic air pillows for cushioning packages, replacing them with paper. But not all plastic can be swapped for paper, prompting the team to experiment with biopolyesters — which tend to be biodegradable, and are often made from renewable sources.
However, the lab's "work is twofold," and manufacturing is only part of their focus. Post-consumer recycling is another part, and the team has partnered with businesses like EsterCycle, a circular recycling startup.
Julia Curley, scientist and founder of EsterCycle, explained that plastics are made from "long chains of molecules" known as polymers. She said "cutting that chain into its individual components" was "kind of like taking apart a large string of Legos into its individual pieces," and that those pieces can serve as "building blocks" for new products.
There's no question Amazon still has work to do to be an eco-friendly brand, but Jacobsen claimed it plans to share its findings to mitigate plastic pollution with other companies.
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"We don't want to own the IP and keep it to ourselves. We want everybody to have access; we have no financial motivation," Jacobsen said.
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