With spring in full bloom, Amazon has been promoting its record on combatting climate change in recent weeks. The company’s announcements about new sign-ons to its Climate Pledge and commitments to attaining lofty sustainability goals sound promising. A closer examination raises questions about Amazon’s true colors when it comes to sustainability. Green is not yet one of them. The e-commerce giant has achieved little to reduce its environmental footprint and, in some instances, has done more harm than good.
Admittedly, initiating a comprehensive process to attain sustainability is a complex undertaking for any corporation approaching the scale of Amazon’s operations. Yet, even when taking into account the inevitable missteps along the learning curve of implementation, public trust is a commodity that, once lost, can impede the ultimate goal of securing an inhabitable planet. When it comes to sustainability, it’s clear that the e-commerce titan’s reputation is at risk, no matter what its greenwashing efforts intend for you to believe.
Amazon is but one example of a company that claims to set the sustainability bar high while dawdling on the sidelines. Amazon, and not unexpectedly for a company obsessed with its image, routinely touts the ambitious goals of its Climate Pledge. Pledge signatories endorse a range of sustainability commitments to meet the Paris Climate Accords, 10 years ahead of schedule. But companies which choose to align themselves with the initiative should look elsewhere if they are committed to tackling climate change.
Keep in mind that the launch of the initiative was in the wake of intense employee scrutiny activism. Amazon faced a barrage of criticism from its workers in 2019 about the company’s persistent failure to address climate change. Only after being faced with such a PR debacle did Amazon roll out any sort of meaningful commitments to fighting climate change.
Criticism of the company’s purported sustainability commitments is well founded. According to a report from nonprofit ocean advocacy group Oceana, Amazon was responsible for 465 million pounds of plastic packaging waste in 2019. Furthermore, Oceana estimated that more than 22 million pounds of plastic packaging waste was funneled directly into freshwater and marine ecosystems.
Amazon’s and its competitors’ relentless pursuit to be number one in providing same-day, one-day, and next-day delivery services has come at a direct cost to our planet. Despite bold commitments to curb its carbon footprint, Amazon quietly announced in 2020 that emissions from its business operations increased to more than 51 million metric tons of carbon dioxide — a 15 percent jump from the prior year, 2019. To its credit, its evaluation methodology was comprehensive, even to include the carbon footprint of customers driving to its Whole Foods stores, for example. Nonetheless, a 15 percent increase is troubling.
Even Amazon’s properties with a less publicly visible physical presence, like Amazon Web Services, the company’s expanding cloud computing arm, can result in harmful impacts to the environment. Amazon’s Virginia data centers are electricity guzzlers, with the energy required to power them at full capacity for a year equivalent to the electricity required to power 1.4 million U.S. homes annually. And when compared to its competitors, the data centers ranked at the bottom in terms of renewable energy usage — another disappointing finding.
Given these failures to yet live up to its promises on combatting climate change, it is unsurprising that Amazon’s critics construe the company’s glossy statements as mere diversionary lip-service. Concealing environmental impacts in seeking to ameliorate negative public relations consequences does not contribute to a healthier planet. Amazon received an F grade from the Carbon Disclosure Project in 2020. The company’s lack of disclosure on climate efforts has routinely resulted in a failing grade from the watchdog group.
Our planet has been in a state of crisis, with far too many communities forced to confront the pressing consequences of climate change. We are near daily discovering the deleterious effects from the mash-up of consumer convenience and the exploitation of natural resources.
That we need practical, viable solutions to address climate change is a given. That “the private sector has a crucial role to play in protecting our environment” has become almost a token cliché. The road to a cleaner, healthier planet does not yet start with Amazon. To achieve measurable progress, scrutiny and exposure of environmental offenders must continue — Amazon included.