Amazon UK will no longer use plastic

Amazon UK has announced that it will no longer pack its products in single-use plastic delivery bags. The UK Amazon branch will begin to use recyclable paper and cardboard delivery boxes and bags in a bet for a more clean and sustainable future.

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Currently, the company holds up to 20 warehouses in the UK, counting both the ones owned by the company, the ones rented, and the temporary port - and transit warehouses.

We need to keep in mind that currently, Amazon is the largest private parcel courier in the UK, delivering 15% of the estimated 5.4bn packages in 2021 – the equivalent of more than 2m items a day. They range from Prime next-day deliveries to the last mile of packages shipped from thousands of miles away in China or India.

The “Amazon effect” in the UK 

Due to the e-commerce surge in our post-pandemic world, some administrations in counties and cities in the UK have started to cope with a massive increase in waste from e-commerce packages. This has been dupped the “Amazon effect”. 

And the problem is that the Amazon effect is happening with the recycled materials also: cardboard and paper are left on the curbside, piled up because the recycling companies can’t handle the huge surge derived from the massive increase in e-commerce. 

An effect that, at least in Norfolk County, reportedly caused 159 tonnes of waste during 2021. According to  Norfolk Recycles - part of the Norfolk Waste Partnership, made up of the region's county, district, city, and borough councils - said the amount of recycling waste has increased by 6pc in the last year, to 159,221 tonnes.

A situation that is also happening all over the UK. 

Rising environmental and financial costs of e-commerce 

One of the key issues with Amazon in the UK has been the environmental cost of its services. This situation is not new, last year up to £7bn was lost due to e-commerce returns, and the carbon footprint suffered heavily from this. 

And even when the statistic is a global one, including all e-commerce in the UK, many blame Amazon directly for it, claiming that the current e-commerce standards that have created this situation, are a consequence of Amazon’s global business model that has pushed all other e-commerce to emulated or disappear. 

This recent awareness that the current e-commerce standards for packaging, delivery, and returns, are no longer valid - due to the high environmental costs it has - has pushed companies into researching and promoting more sustainable and eco-friendly solutions. 

One of such is Recycold’s solution plant-based thermal solution for cold chain packaging, a sector normally heavy on the use of plastics, which had no previous cost-efficient alternative. 

It seems pretty clear that the current way of packaging, delivery, and recycling is just not enough to cope with the environmental cost of a rising global e-commerce economy. And you can rest assured that in the near and mid-term, we will continue to see industry leaders like Amazon, pushing towards experimental new ways to be more eco-friendly. So if you have not done anything in this regard for your e-commerce packaging and delivery, we strongly recommend you to start perusing possible eco-friendly solutions both for the packing, as well as for the transportation of your goods.