Amazon replaces 95% of plastic air pillows from delivery packaging in N.America

23 / 06 / 2024

By Marwa Nassar - -

Amazon has replaced 95% of the plastic air pillows from delivery packaging in North America with paper filler, working toward full removal by the end of the year.

This is another step in the company’s path to avoid and reduce packaging—and part of our multi-year effort to remove plastic delivery packaging from North America fulfillment centers. To date, this will be Amazon’s largest plastic packaging reduction effort in North America and will avoid nearly 15 billion plastic air pillows annually. For Prime Day this year, nearly all of our customer deliveries will not contain plastic air pillows.

“I’m proud of the cross-Amazon collaboration to make a positive impact on the customer delivery experience with easier to recycle materials. It’s a great example of how we thoughtfully test and scale new solutions to protect our customer experience,” said Pat Lindner, VP of Mechatronics and Sustainable Packaging. “We are working towards full removal in North America by end of year and will continue to innovate, test, and scale in order to prioritize curbside recyclable materials.”

Last October, Amazon announced its first U.S. automated fulfillment center in Ohio to eliminate plastic delivery packaging, including the transition from plastic air pillows to paper filler. This work in Ohio allowed us to test and learn and move quickly on transitioning to paper filler for 95% of the company’s shipments in less than a year. To achieve this, Amazon’s teams collaborated with suppliers to source paper filler made from 100% recycled content, while also coordinating the transition across hundreds of our fulfillment centers. This included working with thousands of employees to change our machinery as well as to host employee trainings for these new systems and machines.

Through its testing of paper filler—which included an assessment by a third-party engineer lab – Amazon discovered that it offers the same, if not better, protection to products than plastic air pillows. The paper filler is also curbside recyclable, making it easier for its customers to recycle at home, and made from 100% percent recycled content.

This effort builds on Amazon’s ongoing investment in reducing packaging and increasing curbside recyclability across all of our operations, while ensuring products get to customers undamaged. This includes programs Amazon has invested in for many years—like our work to ship items without any additional packaging. In 2022, 11% of all packages shipped by Amazon globally were without added Amazon delivery packaging through our Ships in Product Packaging program, where it tests and certifies products to ensure they can safely ship in their own packaging.

The company is also working to invent new materials and recycling solutions that keep both its customers and the environment in mind. For example, Amazon has teamed up with the U.S. Department of Energy to bring new materials and recycling programs to life. It is also piloting new technology with Glacier, a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics company, to use AI-powered robots to automate the sorting of recyclables and collect real-time data on recycling streams for companies—which can help reduce landfill waste and increase the use of recycled materials in packaging.

Teams across Amazon are working every day to further its sustainability initiatives in its operations and provide customers with a more sustainable shopping experience, from improving our packaging to electrifying our delivery fleet and investing in renewable and carbon-free energy.