Amazon's step-by-step approach to reducing waste across its operations

Amazon’s scale and diverse range of offerings requires us to handle a wide range of items and materials in our operations - from the products we sell online to the food in our grocery stores to the equipment in our fulfillment centers. To manage these materials responsibly, we need to minimize waste effectively. We use data to identify the highest impact opportunities and follow a step-by-step approach to minimize waste:

• Prevent waste when possible

• Reduce existing waste

• Reuse items

Behind this simple framework lies significant effort and innovation – from creating practical solutions that can be scaled across thousands of sites to finding new materials and investing in advanced sortation technology.

For the remaining existing items and materials we prioritize recycling and composting to divert from incineration or landfill.

“At Amazon, we see waste as a defect to be eliminated or reduced unless it’s absolutely necessary. That’s why we have dedicated teams working to reduce waste across our businesses,” said Priscilla Okyere, Head of Waste and Circular Solutions at Amazon. “By finding ways to reuse materials instead of throwing them away, we're helping the environment while also making smart business decisions. We use data to identify where we can make the biggest impact, then either improve existing solutions or create new ones from scratch.”

Here are just a few of the ways we prevent, reduce, reuse, and recycle or compost materials and items across our various businesses.

• Online shopping features like AI-generated customer review summaries, the “Frequently returned item” and “Customers usually keep this item” badges, and clothing size recommendations help customers make more informed purchasing decisions, which can help reduce returns.
• Whole Foods Market works with “Too Good To Go”, an app that enables customers to purchase surplus food at discounted prices. In 2024 alone, this initiative has diverted an equivalent of 636,000 meals from going to waste in the U.S.
• Switching from wood pallets and cardboard containers to reusable, durable carts helped us avoid using 85 million wood pallets last year across our fulfillment centers.

• We’ve developed mechanisms that connect unused assets across Amazon sites either to another site or a charity, repurposing 310,000 assets and materials from these programs in 2024. In Valencia, Spain, 5,000 of our unused assets like first aid supplies and shelving were donated to Fundación Altius to support disaster relief efforts and affected communities following the floods.
• Before removing overstock from our inventory, we try to sell it at a discount. In 2024, we sold 68 million retail sellers’ items on Amazon Outlet.
• Amazon MGM Studios launched its first Reusable Asset Hub in North America in 2024, which houses production items ranging from electronics to furniture that can be reused for future Amazon productions. Nearly 15 productions have already benefited from this resource, including Countdown, Criminal, and Buy It Now.

• We collaborated with RafCycle, who can recycle the mixed material backing from adhesive labels used throughout our operations into things like building insulation and coffee cups. This solution increased recycling of this material by 16% from 2023 to 2024 in North America. In Japan, we work with a supplier to turn the material into toilet paper, increasing recycling by 50% from 2023 to 2024.
• We invested in Glacier, an AI robotics sortation company, and are testing their technology to reduce contamination in waste streams and to optimize recycling processes.
• We’re piloting Oscar Sort, an AI-powered Sorting Assistant that gamifies recycling and helps users correctly sort their waste, at select Amazon Fresh stores. Since launching in 2024, Oscar has boosted recycling accuracy by 9% and composting accuracy by 8%.

Our waste management prioritizes prevention, reduction, and reuse. From there, we look to recycle or compost existing waste. When necessary, we convert waste to energy through incineration, using landfills only as a last resort. We continue to find ways to prevent, reduce, reuse, and recycle or compost, innovating where solutions don’t currently exist, and sharing our progress as we make it. Learn more about Amazon’s overall sustainability progress here.