Cross posted from: https://feddit.de/post/11174494

Experts like Dana Miller, director of strategic initiatives at the nonprofit Oceana, would like Amazon to reduce plastics “because of a moral responsibility … to reduce their impact on the environment.” But the company has been slow to respond to moral appeals from customers and shareholders, including three shareholder resolutions since 2021 invoking plastics’ damages to marine ecosystems and human health. The resolutions, which each received more than 30 percent of shareholder votes, asked Amazon to cut plastics use globally by one-third by 2030. When announcing that it had cut plastics use globally by 11.6 percent, Amazon did not make a quantitative or time-bound commitment to further reductions.

Instead, Amazon seems to have taken its biggest steps to reduce plastic packaging in response to stringent plastic regulations, or the threat of them. “Amazon is a clever company,” Miller said. “They see things in the pipeline and they want to move early.”