Amazon generates a lot of trash. Precisely how much is a matter of some debate. In 2021, the company says it used 214 million or so pounds of single-use plastic in its packaging. Nonprofit ocean conservation firm Oceana, on the other hand, put that figure at approximately ~700 million pounds. That’s a huge gulf, but in either case, we’re talking about a lot of trash.
The company has been making strides on this front, as it stares down the face of an ambitious 2040 net-zero carbon emission goal. Take for example, its ongoing efforts to reduce package weights and replace plastics with paper products. Or, more recently, a new deal with Glacier. This week, Amazon is announcing an investment through its Climate Pledge Fund and plans to implement the Bay Area recycling robotics startup’s technology to find out what happens to its packaging once it leaves consumers’ hands.
“Our investment in Glacier is really about creating a circular economy supply chain,” Nick Ellis, principal at Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, tells TechCrunch. “We want to do that sustainably, and that piece has always been a bit of a black box. Once that package ends up at our customer’s doorstep, what happens to it? Glacier finally allows us to see that last piece of the puzzle and understand is that packaging ending up in a recycling stream or a waste stream.”