Amazon Sustainability Ambassadors

Recognizing that global challenges require global participation, Sustainability Ambassadors seek opportunities to lead and collaborate, using their collective action to amplify and deliver on Amazon’s ambitious sustainability goals. Ambassadors raise awareness of sustainability as a practice for all Amazonians by delivering environmental education through on-site events. They lead projects and pilot initiatives within buildings and across communities, striving to make Amazon the most sustainable place to work.

Examples of initiatives include: diverting products from waste into donations for people in need; developing innovations in recycling programs to include new products and locations; setting up local commute options like carpool programs and bike to work challenges; conducting energy audits with local utilities and implementing new energy efficiency programs; organizing community cleanup events at local beaches, parks, and wetlands; and developing services aimed at helping customers meet their own sustainability goals.

Ambassadors based in our fulfillment centers and operations facilities focus on sustainability projects that help sites deliver on their carbon reduction goals. The program provides a community platform to share best practices and scale sustainability across our worldwide networks. In Poland, one Ambassador team collectively redesigned the waste segregation process in their fulfillment center, driving waste recycling rates up by over 40%.

Ambassadors in our corporate offices have a unique opportunity to launch ideas with data-driven analysis using Amazon technology. For example, after auditing waste at our global headquarters in Seattle, Ambassadors developed a proposal to improve waste sorting using DeepLens—a deep learning enabled video camera from Amazon Web Services. A team of Amazon employees built a dataset and model that used DeepLens’ object detection capabilities to identify the waste items being discarded and use built-in audio to tell people which bin to use for a given item.

The combination of ground-level action with scalable ideas and advanced technology makes Sustainability Ambassadors critical partners in achieving Amazon’s larger sustainability goals.