Amazon announced that it has removed 95% of plastic air pillows from its packaging in North America and will replace them with paper fills made with 100% recycled content.
This is Amazon’s largest plastic packaging reduction effort and will help it eliminate nearly 15 billion plastic pillows a year.
“We are working to achieve complete elimination in North America by the end of the year and will continue to innovate, test and scale to prioritize recyclable materials at the curb,” Pat Lindner, vice president of Mechatronics and Sustainable Packaging, said in the announcement.
The e-commerce company began moving away from plastic landfill in October 2023 when it announced its first automated fulfillment center in the U.S. to eliminate plastic packaging for delivery.
Amazon collaborated with suppliers to source paper refills that are also curbside recyclable.
This is not the first step Amazon has taken to reduce its packaging waste.
In 2015, the company launched the Ships in Product Packaging program, an initiative designed to reduce the use of Amazon’s signature brown box and instead ship products in their original packaging.
This article was originally published in English by Katie Bartlett for our sister network CNBC.com. For more from CNBC go here.
