Amazon’s plastic packaging waste grew 18% in 2021, report says | Grist

• 05 January 2024
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• amazon,
• design,
• environmentalism,
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• plastic,
• recycling

If all the company’s plastic from 2021 were converted into plastic air pillows — the inflated pouches inserted in some Amazon packages to reduce shifting during transit — and laid side by side, Miller said it would circle the globe more than 800 times.

This is ridiculous and shouldn't be happening. Here's an idea: bring back the old-school milk man delivery format. Nearly every day an Amazon truck cruises down my street. Amazon should provide households with a reusable bin (bonus: made of their own recycled single-use plastic) similar to the ones I'd unload off of the weekly delivery truck when I worked at CVS as a teenager: Amazon drivers would deliver goods in these bins, and collect the empty bins from the curb or doorstop or whatever. Just like the milk man. It's a tragedy that this isn't more of a priority. This is the type of problem Amazon should be unleashing scores of designers on. Ruined By Design by Mike Monteiro comes to mind here. It's a solvable (or at least drastically reducible) problem, and I'd love to see this change.