Amazon's Carton Packaging Innovation Lab and its future packaging strategy!
Inside the Amazon facility in Sumner, Wash., one package dropped 17 times. Nearby, other packages were bearing 30,000 pounds of weight or were pressed together by two clips, hoping to avoid any deformation under pressure. These doomed packages aren't delivered to customers' doorsteps or through Amazon's usual network of warehouses. Instead, they're mere "lab rats."
At Amazon's Packaging Innovation Lab - a 10,000-square-foot facility in Sumner's Amazon complex - packages are placed in winches. The lab has a machine that simulates bumps in the back of semi-trailers and another that simulates hitting the walls of these trailers as drivers hit the brakes. It has extremely cold rooms as well as extremely wet rooms. It tests for drops - on each side of the carton, following a specific 17-drop protocol.
Justin Mahler, Amazon's director of packaging innovation, said the lab is designed to cover the entire delivery process from "package to porch." This is part of a testing protocol Amazon has developed to improve its packaging to reduce the amount of plastic, cardboard or other materials used to ship items, with the ultimate goal of getting rid of packaging entirely.
The Packaging Innovation Lab is one of Amazon's efforts to reduce the vast amount of pollution it produces. On the way, it wants to switch to electric delivery vans. It plans to switch to renewable energy in its data centers and corporate buildings. In its warehouses, it wants to reduce the amount of packaging used per shipment, while ensuring each product arrives on time and in good condition.
Amazon says it is making progress, but environmental groups, employees and stakeholders are increasingly calling on the company to do more. "As one of the biggest retailers, they have one of the biggest opportunities to make a difference," said Pam Clough, an advocate for environmental Washington. "And right now, they're not stepping up."
Nearly 2,000 corporate employees pledged to take part in a May strike to demand Amazon do more to address its impact on the climate. Activists also gathered outside the company's Seattle headquarters to demand Amazon reduce emissions. About 30 percent of investors voted in favor of a resolution at the company's annual shareholder meeting last month that would require Amazon to set goals to reduce plastic use.
Patrick Lindner, Amazon's vice-president of packaging and innovation, said Amazon said it was taking inspiration from customers who encouraged the company to ditch single-use packaging, over-packaging and anything that felt wasteful. "They continue to bring us insights, and the benefit of working here is that we have solutions."
About 10 years ago, Amazon began to focus on packaging, but that effort is really ramping up as orders surge due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Patrick Lindner said. Amazon has mastered two other important parts of shipping - arriving on time and in good condition. As a result, it can turn its attention to eliminating waste. "If we don't do well on the first two and don't meet customer expectations, then we never have a chance to drive sustainability."
Amazon first opened its Packaging Innovation Lab in 2009, one of its first corporate buildings on Rainier Avenue in Seattle. In 2022, it moved the lab to Sumner, about 30 miles south, where it is adjacent to an experimental fulfillment center and a partially operated center. The innovation lab, named BFIX, follows the same naming scheme Amazon uses for its other Washington operations centers, such as DuPont's BFI3 and Kent's BFI4.
The lab has about 20 employees, some with engineering backgrounds and others working in Amazon warehouses, where they see what works and what doesn't. In its network of fulfillment centers, Amazon now has buttons for employees to provide packaging feedback as they move items in, out and out of warehouses.
Innovation Labs conducts about 100 tests a week. The company says it also trains labs around the world to conduct their own tests and then reviews tens of thousands of results each week. By comparison, Amazon says it delivers more than 10 million customer packages worldwide each day.
Amazon sends information from the lab to manufacturers, suppliers and suppliers, and analyzes some of it itself. These data points can then help decide the best way to pack items - balancing the desire to pack less while ensuring products are delivered on time and in good condition.
Environmental groups, researchers and Amazon itself all say reducing packaging is important for Amazon, which has a 37 percent share of the U.S. e-commerce market, because people buy so much in its marketplace.
"What's great about Amazon is getting people to consume more," said Deepak Rajagopal, an associate professor at the UCLA Institute for Environment and Sustainability. He studies the life cycle of a product from manufacturing to recycling or landfill. He sees Amazon from two different perspectives: On the one hand, Amazon is trying to find ways to reduce packaging, and on the other, it's trying to make it easier for customers to shop online, which naturally increases the amount of packaging needed overall.
Still, Rajagopal said Amazon's size could be beneficial. Because it's so big, it's able to innovate in ways that smaller companies can't, and if Amazon finds a good solution, it can pass it on to others. In industry jargon, it's called "innovation spillover." Packaging itself isn't expensive, Rajagopal said. But as consumers increasingly start to focus on the waste generated at the time of purchase, over-packaging can incur costs.
Amazon says it has made progress in reducing packaging. The company says it has cut 1.50 million tons of packaging material from the waste stream since 2015. In 2019, Amazon introduced paper mailing bags and partially replaced those slender plastic packages lined like Bubble Wrap. The company tested the durability of the new packs in its Packaging Innovation Lab.
Amazon said it reduced the weight of plastic packaging per shipment by 7 percent in 2021. Last year, the company said its efforts to reduce the amount of paper used per package saved about 60,000 tons of cardboard per year. Amazon used about 97,000 tons of single-use plastic in its global operations in 2021, according to the company's own data, the latest available.
But some environmental groups have questioned Amazon's progress and are demanding the company do more. Oceana, a marine conservation group that has studied the Amazon, says plastic pollution in the Amazon is actually on the rise. Oceana estimates the Amazon produced 709 million pounds of plastic packaging waste in 2021, an 18 percent increase from its 2020 estimate.
According to Oceana, Amazon has pledged to reduce its plastic use in some markets, but has not done so in the United States. A shareholder resolution requiring Amazon to commit to reducing its plastic use by a third was not passed at its annual general meeting in May.
"While we eliminate tens of thousands of tons of new plastic every year in North America, we know we still have work to do," Patrick Lindner said in a prepared statement. "We are committed to minimizing single-use plastic in packaging globally and eliminating additional packaging entirely."
Matt Littlejohn, Oceana's senior vice-president for strategic initiatives, pointed to Amazon's packaging lab as a sign that the company does have the resources to reduce plastic use. "They seem to already have a solution - if they need to develop more, they can do it. In our view, it's more of a matter of will."
During a visit to the lab in May, Amazon representatives didn't talk about plastic. Instead, they focused most on a program that would help manufacturers ship products through Amazon's network of warehouses without adding any extra Amazon packaging. In other words, Amazon wants to stop putting a small paper package into a large carton.
Amazon uses machine learning to determine which products are naturally eligible for shipping in its own containers, such as toys already in its own branded boxes or blankets that don't require any extra protection. For items that don't fit, Amazon works with suppliers to adjust their packaging to find ways to make it stand alone.
By 2022, about 10 percent of products passing through Amazon warehouses will be shipped without Amazon packaging, the company said. Justin Mahler, director of packaging innovation, said the lab tests TVs a lot because they are relatively fragile and have historically had far more packaging than needed.