You know those little plastic airbags on your more fragile Amazon purchases that make a perfect noise when you crush them? Amazon has said it is reducing its use and plans to eliminate its use entirely by the end of the year.
The e-commerce behemoth announced said it has reduced its use of plastic airbags by 95 percent and switched to shredded paper filler instead. Amazon also said it plans to use the paper filler for “almost all” of its deliveries to customers .
The company says the decision to phase out the use of plastic airbags at its distribution centers is aimed at eliminating unnecessary waste and focusing more on using recycled materials.
Plastic pollution has always been a concern when it comes to our environment, but it has increased dramatically as a result of the meteoric rise of the Amazon, especially during the COVID pandemic. Nonprofit ocean conservation group In 2021, Amazon released a study showing that it generated 599 million pounds of plastic waste in 2020. The group also estimated that the waste from plastic airbags alone would “circle the Earth more than 600 times.”
