Amazon Switches to 100% Paper Packaging at Ohio Facility

Amazon converted machinery at its Ohio facility in the United States to produce 100% paper packaging. The highly automated Amazon fulfillment center in Euclid, Ohio is the first such facility in the United States to replace plastic delivery packaging with paper packaging solutions that are curbside recyclable in boxes. Like most retailers, Amazon has traditionally used a combination of plastic and paper packaging to optimize durability, weight and size. However, recycling plastic packaging typically requires customers to travel to a drop-off location, so Amazon's packaging engineers have continued conducting various research and trials over the years to ensure they found the right solutions to deliver products to customers in paper. The team enabled the Euclid fulfillment center's complete transition to paper packaging by rebuilding existing machinery to use paper instead of plastic, creating durable and flexible paper packaging, advancing ready-made packaging technology and transitioning from plastic air pillows to paper fill. This work is part of a multi-year effort to convert fulfillment centers in the United States to paper, and these new paper solutions will provide convenience by enabling many customers to recycle at home. Pat Lindner, Vice President of Mechatronics and Sustainable Packaging at Amazon, stated: "This is a significant milestone for our fulfillment centers in the United States. I am proud of our teams developing new technologies to eliminate plastic packaging. This is just the beginning as we continue to find more ways to eliminate and reduce plastic packaging for our customers." Customers demand that their orders be delivered in the right size, easily recyclable packaging that ensures the product arrives undamaged and minimizes environmental impact. Amazon previously used plastic air pillows in cases where an order required additional packaging for product safety. While common practice in retail shipments, these pillows require extra effort from customers to open them and then drop them off at a local recycling facility. To address this problem, Amazon switched to paper fill made from 100% recycled content, allowing customers to easily recycle it in curbside recycling bins. Amazon also spent the last few years developing a new machine that creates appropriately sized, curbside recyclable packages on demand for products requiring more protection than an unfilled pouch. This machine measures the order's dimensions and then creates a protective package of the right size using a type of corrugated cardboard that is more flexible and lighter than a typical box. This new technology has the widest custom package size range among other machines at Amazon and is capable of creating made-to-order packaging for approximately half of the packages Amazon ships. These machines, combined with lighter corrugated cardboard, minimize the amount of material sent per package, reducing waste, and also provide customers with an easy-open experience. Source