Amazon”s online sales are having a devastating impact on the planet, according to a new report by Oceana, a US-based not-for-profit which campaigns against the pollution of the world’s seas.
In 2019 alone, Amazon generated 211 million kilos of plastic waste from the packaging on its goods, the authors of the report found. Most of the waste goes to landfill sites and much of it ends up in the world’s oceans.
Amazon disputes the report’s figures, and says it only uses a third of the amount of plastic quoted. But Oceana argues that it has been unable to obtain any other data from Amazon.
The report calculates that, if laid out, the so-called air pillows used to protect the contents of parcels would circle the earth 500 times. And in 2020, the growth in online sales during the pandemic is expected to have increased Amazon’s pollution footprint by about a third.
Euronews spoke to one of the people behind the report, Matt Littlejohn, who is Senior Vice President of Oceana.
Watch the full interview in the media player above.