The Cost of Convenience
Is Amazon’s sustainability plan good enough?
It's crazy to think about how technology has transformed our lives and has made our world feel closer together — with the click of a button, we can video chat friends, order any product you can think of, and learn about anything from all over the world.
We live in an era where convenience remains one of the most important factors when making purchases, and now that consumers are so used to receiving packages in as little as 2 days, a couple hours, or even 15 minutes, convenience is key.
Jeff Bezos figured out what society needed before it even knew what it needed, and with him stepping down on July 5th (the day Amazon was incorporated back in 1994) we thought it'd be a prime time to cover the impact Amazon has had over the years.
At a Glance
What started off as a place to buy and sell books has become a marketplace to buy whatever you need, all in one place, delivered to you in as little as one hour. Looking for groceries, chia pets, inflatable sloth floats, a taco sleeping bag, or a mobile phone jail? Amazon has got you covered from everything your heart desires, with Amazon reporting they sold over 250 million items on Prime Day 2021 alone.
But this click-of-a-button convenience comes at a cost: with over 1.6 million packages being shipped out everyday, the impact that Amazon has had on the environment and its employees is astronomical. In 2020, Amazon stated that they released about 60.64 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, and increased their carbon footprint by 19%. And the craziest part is that the company has diversified to offering cloud services, online stores, subscription services, and more, with their revenue totalling $381B last year.
Environmental Cost
Last year Bezos stated that he would spend $10B to combat global climate change with his newly created Bezos Earth Fund. Yet, it is difficult to believe that this will make a dent in the carbon footprint Amazon creates because of Amazon’s core businesses. Online shopping and cloud computing are two of the biggest contributors to climate change, with the amount of energy required to ensure people get their packages on time and that they can hop onto Prime Video in an instance.
Online Shopping
Amazon’s growing network of trucks and planes has solidified its place as a logistical mastermind. This flow of goods around the world is incredibly impactful toward the environment, factoring in driving routes, vehicles, packaging practices, package returns, etc. And initially, e-commerce delivery seems great, with the potential to reduce individual vehicles driving to a store for individual items. After all, one larger delivery truck dropping off packages for many people in consolidated locations could reduce gas emissions.
However, depending on individual factors such as where you live and how you get around, a delivery truck often may be worse. More and more companies are offering faster, rushed deliveries — people want more goods, immediately. According to Amazon, one or same-day shipping ships from local inventory storage, which reduces travel distance therefore reducing carbon emissions. But in the end, this just adds more vehicles, more traffic, and potentially more emissions.
On average, delivery vans need to make more than six stops on a trip for there to be an emission advantage to mass deliveries. In 2017, UPS disclosed that online shopping in the past few years has decreased this number of packages dropped off per mile, often leading to carbon emissions as much as 35 times greater than “traditional shopping.” The World Economic Forum stated in a recent report that “e-commerce delivery will result in 36% more delivery vehicles in inner cities by 2030.”
This doesn’t even touch on the volume of packaging produced. Selling more stuff at cheaper prices for same-day delivery encourages consumers to buy individual items, which will use more packaging and produce more single-use garbage. We’ve talked about how all these plastics get into the ocean in our past edition on shampoo. And while people have found ways to have Amazon deliver more “sustainable” packaging, the lack of transparency from Amazon about how free and fast shipping contributes to increased packaging and more carbon emissions continues to encourage “over-delivering” on consumerism and reduced prices.
Cloud Computing
Amazon is also well known for AWS, or Amazon Web Services, a cloud services platform that offers computing power, database storage, and more. According to the Department of Energy, data centers like AWS make up about 2% of all electricity use in the United States. And as Amazon continues to expand its data centers, it needs to be able to commit to power them with renewable energy.
Jonathan Koomey, a researcher and expert on energy-efficient computing, highlights three core metrics to determine cloud computing “greeness”:
Efficiency of a data center’s infrastructure (lights, cooling, etc.)
Efficiency of its servers
Source of its electricity.
The first two metrics will be improved by companies to help save money. The third metric, however, is where many companies, including Amazon, try to make commitments toward decarbonizing their data centers, with a majority of the source coming from fossil fuels.
Amazon, Microsoft and Google all lean heavily into something known as a renewable energy credit, or REC. RECs are tokens that represent a utility’s green energy generation. This causes this disparity between only 12% of Amazon’s energy actually using truly renewable resources like solar or wind, but allowing for Amazon to claim they have achieved 50% renewable energy in 2018.
In fact, in the last few years, AWS has continued to increase its operations by more than 50%, while not adding any new renewable energy resources. Similar to the lack of transparency for online shopping, Amazon has withheld information about its carbon footprint on its cloud centers. Additionally, AWS still touts that it supports the oil and gas industry in its services.
Human Cost
There's a lot going behind the scenes to get your hand sanitizer (which at some point during the pandemic sold for over $100 on Amazon due to a shortage) in prime time. There are employees that need to pack, ship, and deliver orders. And with millions of packages needing to be delivered in a short period of time, Amazon employees work around the clock to the point where there is no time for bathroom breaks and they have to resort to peeing in bottles.
Amazon warehouse employees and drivers:
are given work phones that track their location and are used as a tool to micromanage employees. When they take a break for as little as 5 minutes employees will get a phone call from the supervisor telling them to get back on track.
are given 200-250 stops a day, and are required to keep going with only a 30 minute lunch break. The rest of the time is spent driving and delivering with not a minute of rest to spare.
feel that the company emphasizes speed > safety
get into serious work accidents, which can be fatal and are met with little sympathy from supervisors.
are paid poorly and intimidated by supervisors.
During the pandemic, more than 19,000 workers got the virus and had to continue working in unclean and shoddy conditions, even though profits increased 200% over the course of the pandemic.
Amazon’s Plans
Pushed by critics to change in 2018 (although they deny this is the case), Amazon annually reports on how it is performing as a company and how to improve its shortcomings. With long-overdue plans to be netzero carbon by 2040 and run on 100% renewable energy by 2030, Amazon has made big commitments to invest in a more sustainable and ethical future.
They also have purchased over 100,000 fully electric delivery vehicles, invested $100 million into nature-based climate solutions and reforestation, and started sustainable packaging programs like Ship in Own Containers. They also stated that they have collaborated with manufacturers and distributors to reduce packaging weight by 27% and eliminate more than 810,000 tons of material.
Plans to have wind and solar power make up 80% of their energy are also in the mix, with investments in Australia, Sweden, Spain and Virginia. All are expected to help generate over 140,000 MWh of renewable energy, equivalent to almost 23,000 average Australian households.
What Amazon Needs to Do
But the advocacy group, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, has consistently stated that Amazon has not taken strong enough action to fight climate change. Greenpeace has also made several statements about the lack of transparency, clear actionable plans and achievable goals that Amazon can attain.
Here are some of the things groups want Amazon to do:
Stop building new data centers that rely on fossil fuel or nuclear energy.
Share complete and accurate data to the Carbon Disclosure Project.
Stop supporting the oil and gas industry with AWS technology.
Financially support communities that are impacted by pollution caused by Amazon.
Stop intimidating and firing employees from speaking out against Amazon’s climate policies.
Protect the health and rights of Amazon employees throughout the supply chain.
There are also many questions about whether Jeff Bezos cares more about going to space than about taking care of the planet in a sustainable and ethical manner.
What You Can Do
Consider slow shipping. If you don't need a package within 2 days, consider giving workers more time to deliver your goods.
The best thing you can do is purchase fewer items, and only buy what you truly need: this is great for your wallet and the environment.
Shop small! If you search "support small" on Amazon you can find local small businesses.
Consider buying from greener marketplaces such as Earth Hero, Public Goods, Well Earth Goods, and Earth Hero
Buy second hand — Amazon gives you the option to purchase used goods which give you the opportunity to give products a second life.
Before you buy, do thorough research so you're less likely to return products. Products that are returned are discarded rather than stocked and resold.
Questions or comments on this piece? Suggestions on what we should cover next? Send us a note.
Great article. Love these stories.