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Amazon India Dumps Single-Use Plastics for Packaging Across Centers
The Indian Amazon Unit has removed all single-use plastic in its packaging across the country's filling centers, in line with its goal to weed out packaging materials by June, said the e-commerce giant on Monday.
In addition to replacing packaging items such as bubble wraps and air pillows with "paper cushions," the company has also traded packaging tapes for other biodegradable alternatives.
We have effectively removed 100% single-use plastic in all of our filling centers, said Akhil Saxena, vice-president of APAC, LATAM and Middle East and North Africa, in an interview.
Amazon, frequently criticized for using so much plastic and thermocol to cover its billions of packets of products, said last September that its Indian unit will substitute single-use plastic in its packaging by June 2020.
Saxena said on Monday that the COVID-19 pandemic slowed down some of its work, but Amazon India was able to meet its target as the unit started the elimination project even before the national lockdown was imposed.
Last October, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called on people to help end the use of single-use plastic-seen as a pollutant-by 2022.
The 1.3 billion Asian nation does not have an coordinated program for the management of plastic waste, leading to significant littering.
Most Indian cities are among the most polluted in the world, and waste generated from single-use plastic has been a growing issue.
Walmart's Indian e-commerce company, Flipkart, a local competitor to Amazon, said last month that it had limited the use of plastic packaging in its own supply chain to around 50 percent.
