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Sustainability
Sustainability

Waste & circularity

We’re constantly working to prevent and reduce waste across our business. That includes the waste we produce in our operations, as well as customer waste, like packaging and retired products. Through innovation, design, and operational efficiencies, we aim to avoid waste altogether. We also offer programs to enable our customers to repair, resell, recycle, and repurpose their products.

Progress

~166M items we donated or supported our sellers in donating worldwide in 2024

A person wearing Amazon delivery clothing hands a box to a smiling customer.

85% landfill diversion rate, up from 84% in 2023

85M wood pallets avoided by switching to reusable, durable carts in 2024

A person uses a handheld scanning device to scan labels on a crate of packages.

Our approach

Amazon has programs in place to optimize our inventory, reduce food surplus, and source materials that help us prevent waste from the start. Where possible, we look for ways to reduce, reuse, recycle, or compost these materials. When waste is unavoidable, our priority is to recycle it, minimizing what is sent to landfill and incineration.

We know that avoiding waste is an ongoing process and that we cannot do it on our own. We engage with suppliers to reduce waste related to our products, partner with other organizations to scale efforts to transition to a more circular economy, and work with local municipalities to improve recycling infrastructure where we can.

How we prevent and reduce waste

The waste hierarchy, an industry framework, sets our guiding principles for preventing, managing, and reducing waste.

When it comes to product inventory, Amazon prioritizes waste prevention by enabling customers to make more informed shopping decisions—which can reduce customer returns—and lowering the number of products damaged in handling.

The lobby of an Amazon building, with a person standing at reception, and a comfortable seating area.

Across our businesses

Across our business units, we use materials and equipment such as pallets, containers, and carts to transport products between and within our fulfillment centers as well as office furniture, storage racks, electronic equipment, film and studio equipment, and conveyor systems.


We aim to prevent the waste associated with these materials and equipment through the following methods:

 

  • Implementing circular design practices: We develop modular equipment and components that enhance operational efficiency while extending the useful life of assets. Using innovative design principles, we create versatile equipment that can be easily repurposed for multiple uses, reducing material waste and potential losses. This results in more resilient infrastructure where components can be efficiently reused, repaired, or reconfigured, rather than replaced.

 

  • Reducing single-use items and materials: We use a detailed waste stream analysis to evaluate the environmental impact of single-use materials and prioritize circular solutions. As an example, in our corporate offices, we’re increasingly transitioning away from single-use cutlery, plates, and cups and replacing them with reusable alternatives.

 

  • Extending asset life through reuse and donations: We’ve established programs and built tools to enable the internal reuse, repurposing, donation, and responsible management of unused operational assets across Amazon. These programs and tools facilitate the storage, tracking, and transfer of idle assets between Amazon sites, as well as coordination with charities interested in items no longer used by our teams.

Preventing and reducing food waste

To reduce food waste, we’re improving our management and distribution channels and buying practices to minimize surplus food inventory. We also work to reduce our surplus by offering discounts on items at risk of becoming waste. Where food waste is not preventable, we’re working to keep it out of landfills.

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A person takes groceries, including yogurt, milk, and eggs, out of a paper Amazon Fresh bag.
A person takes produce, including tomatoes, onions, and avocados out of a reusable tote bag.
Two people unload boxes of supplies from a Whole Foods Market branded van.
  • We’re working to reduce our food waste by 50% across our U.S. and Europe operations by 2030.
  • Whole Foods Market launched a program with Too Good To Go, a social impact company that has created a marketplace app for surplus food. Through this program, Too Good To Go’s app enables customers to access high-quality food at discounted prices at Whole Foods Market stores across the U.S.
  • Whole Foods Market diverted an equivalent of 636,000 meals from waste in the U.S. as part of this effort in 2024. Additionally, we maintain strong relationships with food charities across our grocery stores, fulfillment centers, and other retail sites to support ongoing donation programs for surplus food.

Landfill diversion

When we are unable to prevent waste, we seek to divert it to the highest recovery option available. In doing so, we reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills and incineration.

Our landfill diversion rate tracks materials diverted from landfill via recycling and incineration with energy recovery. In 2024, our landfill diversion rate was 85%, up from 84% in 2023 and 82% in 2022.

Our progress is driven by four focus areas:

  • Establishing on-site materials separation and recovery programs 
  • Working with specialized waste service providers that offer recycling and recovery solutions 
  • Conducting frequent waste characterization audits 
  • Collaborating with service providers and industry experts to scale innovative solutions

Spotlights

Amazon Web Services

AWS unlocks its greatest potential for circularity through better design practices—including avoiding excess materials, enabling repair and reuse, and integrating recycled content from the start.

Two warehouse workers in safety gear stand by a server rack.

Amazon Second Chance

This resource offers a range of services for customers to recycle, repair, or trade in their items, as well as shop for like-new and refurbished products. It also provides information about how to easily recycle or responsibly dispose of Amazon packaging.

A gloved hand places a label on cardboard that says "thanks to you, this proudct has a second life."

Packaging innovation

We use machine learning, materials innovation, and supplier partnerships to optimize our packaging. This leads to reduced waste and reduced weight, which ultimately helps reduce our carbon emissions. We’re also increasing the recyclability of our packaging for easy curbside recycling for our customers.

A person uses a packaging device with paper mailing materials with the Amazon logo.

Partnering for circularity

We can’t solve all the challenges that underpin the broader shift to a circular economy alone, so we’re working with multiple industry partners to innovate and bring about change at scale.

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Stacks of cardboard in a warehouse, ready for recycling and reuse.
A person wearing gloves places a shipping label on a paper mailer on a conveyor belt.
The sun illuminates the recycling logo on a paper mailer.
Hands holding up samples of fabric materials.
A close up of empty egg shells next to each other on a table.
  • Through an investment made possible by The Climate Pledge Fund, in 2024, we worked with artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics company Glacier to test its AI-enabled waste sorting technology for contamination monitoring in cardboard streams. This testing helps us drive optimal recycling of cardboard waste at Amazon fulfillment centers, and identify newly developed bio-based packaging materials, to enable future sortation of these materials from mixed streams.
  • We collaborated with UPM Raflatac’s RafCycle Service in 2024 to launch a recycling solution for the paper backing from our adhesive labels used throughout operations across our North American fulfillment sites. It is also in place in several of our European facilities. Implementing this solution increased recycling of this material by 16% compared to 2023. We plan to scale it further across our North American operations in the future.
  • We also collaborated with WRAP in the UK to support innovation and improvement in the recycling industry. Our collaboration strives to transform recycling into a system that emphasizes recycled material quality and supports end markets for recycled output.
  • In 2023, we expanded our collaboration with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to drive scalable, industry-wide solutions for a circular economy. As a Strategic Partner of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation Network, we work to leverage our reach, technology, and innovation capabilities and the foundation’s subject-matter expertise to launch and scale circular economy solutions. This collaboration focuses on certifications for products with circular features, providing customers with the information they need to make more circular choices.
  • Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market became members of the U.S. Food Waste Pact, a joint initiative between ReFED and World Wildlife Fund. In joining this national agreement, we’re accelerating progress toward our goals under a proven framework.
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