(AmericanProsperity.com) – Amazon, the online retail service, has been using more plastic in its packaging despite a global plastic phase-out push across the globe.
Oceana, which is a U.S. Marine conservation group, used industry data and the Amazon market to determine how much plastic the company was using. According to the reports, Amazon used over two hundred million pounds of plastic in their packaging which is equivalent to fourteen thousand large African elephants.
This increase occurred even as Amazon was pushing a global phase-out of plastics in their packaging. New rules from the European Union have pushed companies to use less plastics and therefore in Europe, Amazon has replaced their plastic packaging with cardboard and paper.
Oceana said that the amount of plastic that the United States uses and the reliance on it is “troubling” while saying that most of these plastics will end up in the ocean or around marine wildlife. The group said that at least twenty million pounds of Amazon’s plastics will end up in the ocean and waterways.
Matt Littlejohn, senior vice president of strategic initiatives at Oceana said “This sort of plastic film is a big problem for the oceans and a lot of it can’t be recycled.”
He continued, “Amazon is one of the most innovative companies on the planet. It has eliminated plastic packaging in Europe and they can clearly do so across the US, too, even without regulatory pressure. This is a completely solvable problem. They have just got to get on with solving it. They know what to do.”
The vice president of mechatronics and sustainable packaging at Amazon, Pat Lindner, ensured Amazon’s pledge to be plastic-free, saying “Amazon is committed to reducing or eliminating packaging altogether, including the use of single-use plastic, and we’ve shown this by sharing consistent and transparent updates on our progress.”
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