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| Amazon produces millions of kilograms of plastic waste |
The latest report from Oceana, a nonprofit, shows that Amazon is the largest contributor to plastic pollution: Last year, Amazon was responsible for processing 210 million kilograms of plastic waste.
Amazon says this number is over 350% overestimated and claims to use a quarter of Oceana's estimate, which means Amazon is still using more than 52 million kilograms of plastic packaging in 2019.
Amazon did not fully share its plastic footprint through a spokesperson or in its most recent sustainability report in September.
Despite Amazon's opposition, Oceana still insists on the numbers cited in its report.
A spokesman for the organization said: The small amount claimed by the company is a large amount of plastic waste, sufficient to cover the ground more than a hundred times in the form of airbags, which causes serious problems for the oceans.
Someone mentioned that the properties that make plastic a sought-after packing material by companies like Amazon are a big deal for oceans because plastic is so light and easy to transport, so it's simple. going to the sea.
Once in the ocean, the plastic forms an association with piles of floating garbage and often ends up in the stomachs of animals.
In 2019, a whale was found off the coast of the Philippines with 40 kilograms of plastic waste in its stomach.
When people eat fish that have ingested plastic particles in our waste, this plastic can also enter our stomachs.
Oceana is concerned about the increase in the number of online shoppers. Since Amazon hasn't released public data on plastic pollution, the organization has tried to track the numbers on its own.
This non-profit organization collects data on the number of plastic packaging used worldwide from analysts in the packaging industry.
Next, it is assumed that Amazon's share of plastic waste equals its share of the e-commerce market.
Based on this assumption, Oceana estimates that up to 10 million kilograms of plastic waste from the Amazon polluted freshwater and marine ecosystems around the world in the past year.
The hypothesis is based on a study published earlier this year that estimated that 11% of global plastic waste ends up in aquatic ecosystems.
This research isn't just limited to packaging waste, which makes it difficult to determine how much plastic pollution the Amazon sends to the oceans, rivers and lakes from its data.
We have the ambitions of Oceania to protect the world's oceans and help reduce plastic use, but Oceania has seriously miscalculated Amazon's use of plastics, an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement.