What Has Amazon Done for the Environment?
In September 2019, tech giant Amazon co-founded The Climate Pledge with social enterprise Global Optimism. The Climate Pledge provides “a platform for signatories to work together to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2040” (The Climate Pledge 2021). This ambitious pledge to eliminate any carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere aims to reach the deadline of the Paris Climate Agreement ten years early, provided that signatories follow these three principles: 1) regularly measure and report greenhouse gas emissions, 2) implement decarbonization strategies consistent with the Paris Agreement, and 3) offset any remaining carbon emissions through permanent and socially beneficial changes. With the climate crisis getting worse every year, it is about time that major companies take responsibility for their actions affecting the environment.
Amazon undeniably has a massive carbon footprint, partly due to the sheer size of the company as well as its environmental practices. As the first signatory of The Climate Pledge, changes made by Amazon along with the pledge’s signatories can make a significant and crucial difference in preserving the environment. Since 2019, The Climate Pledge’s number of signatories has only grown, holding more companies accountable for their carbon footprint, creating innovative sustainable initiatives, and spreading awareness about the environment’s dire situation. April 2021 marked the milestone of 100 signatories, including major brands such as Visa, Verizon, and Best Buy (Pardilla 2021). Additional signatories include Alaska Airlines, PepsiCo, Colgate-Palmolive, and Heineken, among many other notable companies (Moorhead 2021). As of October 2021, 201 companies have signed the pledge (The Climate Pledge 2021). This increasingly rapid growth of companies committed to the pledge’s three principles has the potential to create a once unbelievable reduction in carbon emissions.
Apart from increasing the number of signatories since 2019, Amazon has made substantial progress on its goals through new sustainable programs. In September 2020, Amazon introduced The Climate Pledge Friendly Program, which aimed at promoting environmentally conscious products to consumers. Third-party sustainability agencies designate certifications to products such as the Global Organic Textile Standard, which focuses on the manufacturing of products’ materials, and the Reducing CO2 label certified by Carbon Trust, which indicates that a brand plans to reduce its emissions every year. Amazon also introduced its own certification, Compact By Design, which is given to products that have had extra air or water removed from their package design, allowing Amazon to ship those products more efficiently and with less packaging of their own. Products that receive these environmental certifications are labeled “Climate Pledge Friendly” on their Amazon listing, making it easier for shoppers to discover and purchase sustainable products from certified brands including Seventh Generation, Neutrogena, Mrs. Meyer’s, and ECOS (Pardilla 2021).
In April 2021, four new certifications were added to the Climate Pledge Friendly set: CarbonNeutral Product (by Natural Capital Partners), Carbon Neutral Certification (by SCS Global Services), Climate Neutral (by Climate Partner), and the Carbon Neutral Certification (by Carbon Trust). These new certifications tripled the number of Climate Pledge Friendly products available to consumers in the U.S. and EU from 25,000 to 75,000 products (Moorhead 2021). Finding sustainable products can often be far too time-consuming for the average shopper, making Amazon's Climate Pledge Friendly Program vital in helping to reduce carbon emissions. Importantly, there is no fee for companies to participate in this program, as the sustainability agencies provide the certification information to Amazon. Even with relatively low costs and easy access to certification information from third-party agencies, other online retailers have failed to take on a similar program. Environmental sustainability does not seem to be the main focus of many companies, though especially now, it certainly should be.
Amazon has also made investments in renewable energy projects to power their corporate offices, fulfillment centers, Whole Foods Markets, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers. In April 2021, nine new utility-scale solar and wind projects located across the U.S., Canada, Spain, Sweden, and the UK were announced, adding up to a total of 206 renewable energy projects worldwide, including 71 utility-scale solar and wind projects and 135 solar rooftops (Moorhead 2021). By June 2021, Amazon unveiled 14 additional renewable energy projects to be developed in the U.S., Canada, Finland, and Spain. All of these projects are expected to generate up to 10 Gigawatts of electricity globally, which is enough to power over 2.5 million U.S. homes in a year. With these exciting investments, Amazon is now the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy in the world, putting the company right on track to be running on 100% renewable energy by 2025 — five years earlier than its initial projection (Businesswire 2021). Furthermore, in June 2020, Amazon announced a $2 billion venture capital fund, called the Climate Pledge Fund, to be invested in early to mid-stage climate tech companies developing decarbonization solutions (Moorhead 2021). The company recently announced the use of this fund for new investments in electric vehicle charging company Resilient Power, sustainable packaging company CMC Machinery, and ultra-low carbon electrofuels company Infinium, creating a total of 11 businesses being invested in from the Climate Pledge Fund (Hanley 2021). If Amazon continues at this rate, it is not difficult to predict that the company will meet its goals by 2040.
However, despite being a leader in the movement to reduce carbon emissions and making significant advancements with its new programs, Amazon does have its faults. With in-person stores closing due to the pandemic back in March 2020, consumers flocked to the most prominent online retailer: Amazon. This created explosive growth for the company as the pandemic endured. By 2021, Amazon reported $108.5 billion in sales within the first quarter, a 44% increase from the previous year. Unsurprisingly, Amazon also reported $8.1 billion in profit from that same three-month period, which was a 220% increase from 2020 (Weise 2021). With this growth comes more concern about the major company’s environmental impact. Christopher Marquis, the Samuel C. Johnson Professor in Sustainable Global Enterprise at Cornell University, believes that “given their size and prominence, they could do more if they really wanted to walk the talk” (Baram 2021). Others question Amazon’s progress due to a lack of transparency, which is exactly what the first goal of The Climate Pledge was intended to prevent. Of course, carbon emissions are not the only key player in environmental metrics, though; Amazon has not disclosed data on its use of recycled packaging or increase in electric delivery vehicles (Baram 2021). The pandemic has only amplified Amazon’s underlying issues as the company accounts for a rising number of products and deliveries.
Additionally, while Amazon is projected to run on 100% renewable energy by 2025, the company reported a 15% increase in carbon emissions in 2020 — more than 51 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (Baram 2021). As the company continues to expand, new strategies will be required to mitigate these emissions. Moreover, Amazon’s employees have criticized the company’s operations due to its disproportionate effects on people of color. In May 2021, 640 Amazon tech and corporate employees signed a petition asking Amazon to increase its global emissions goals and address the company’s pollution in Black, Latino, Indigenous, and immigrant neighborhoods — the location of most warehouses (Glaser & Miranda 2021). Constant emissions from freight trucks leaving and returning to Amazon fulfillment centers have been linked to asthma and other respiratory illnesses (Baram 2021), which has rightfully outraged workers and people in these communities. The employees state, “We are alarmed that Amazon's pollution is disproportionately concentrated in communities of color… We want to be proud of where we work. A company that lives up to its statements about racial equity and closes the racial equity gaps in its operations is a critical part of that” (Glaser & Miranda 2021). If Amazon wants to live up to the eco-conscious image that The Climate Pledge entails, then some serious change ought to be made in the logistics of its operations. This could involve a multitude of solutions such as using electric vehicles in vulnerable areas or creating a more efficient delivery schedule.
Amazon is clearly far from perfect when it comes to environmental impact, particularly over the past year and a half due to the pandemic. But its efforts should not be discounted. Creating a coalition of more than 200 businesses committed to reducing carbon emissions is no easy feat, and Amazon took the lead. In response to criticism over Amazon’s environmental efforts, Director of The Climate Pledge Sally Fouts stated, “There's an urgency to the climate crisis that we've never seen with previous crises. We just frankly don't have time for debates that will prevent us from moving forward” (Moorhead 2021). There is always more work to be done and improvements to be made to protect our environment, but Amazon’s The Climate Pledge was certainly a step in the right direction.
References
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