6 takeaways from the 2024 Amazon Sustainability Report

We’re improving the energy efficiency of our business, decarbonizing our transportation network, and investing in biodiversity projects around the world. 

Our annual Sustainability Report documents Amazon’s progress as we seek to become a more sustainable company. We set bold, long-term aspirations, such as The Climate Pledge—our goal to reach net-zero carbon emissions across our global operations by 2040—and create strategic, actionable plans to achieve them. Our latest Report, published today, shows that we’re continuing to build a lower-carbon-intensive business, improving the energy efficiency of our business even as new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) demand greater data center capacity. We’re also working to decarbonize our transportation network by bolstering our global fleet of electric delivery vans with 31,400 electric vans in our fleet now delivering packages.  

Through the Right Now Climate Fund, we’ve protected or restored 49,000 hectares of land through biodiversity- and nature-related projects over the past five years. And Amazon Web Services (AWS) is 53% of the way toward achieving a goal of becoming water positive by 2030, meaning we’re poised to return more water to communities and the environment than we use in our AWS data center operations. Additionally, we announced a new water commitment in India to return more water to communities than we use in our operations by 2027. We’re also innovating to reduce waste and divert waste from landfills, strengthening our global human rights risk management, and investing in measures to become the safest company in the industries in which we operate.

Here are just a few of the highlights from this year’s Report. Check out the full 2024 Amazon Sustainability Report here.

1. We’re building a lower-carbon-intensive business for our customers and the planet, especially as advancements in technologies like AI increase global demand for data center capacity. 

Amazon continually invests in new solutions to decarbonize our business as part of our Climate Pledge commitment. This includes making our operations more efficient, deploying lower-carbon alternatives, investing in carbon-free energy, engaging with suppliers to implement emissions reduction strategies, and investing in carbon neutralization projects.

One hundred percent of electricity consumed by Amazon was matched with renewable energy sources in 2024 for the second consecutive year. To get there, we’ve become the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the world for five years running. We’ve also invested billions in more than 600 renewable energy projects—including 124 new projects in 2024—which can generate enough energy to power the equivalent of 8.3 million homes in the United States.

New tools like generative AI are increasing global demands for energy. We’re addressing this with solutions developed through our AWS business, including optimized data center designs, purpose-built chips, and innovative cooling technologies. Using these measures in 2024, we achieved a 1.15 Global Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) for AWS data centers compared with the industry average of 1.25.

2. We’re growing our fleet of electric delivery vehicles.

We’ve made steady progress toward our goal to have at least 100,000 electric delivery vans on the road globally by 2030. At the end of 2024, Amazon had deployed 31,400 such vans, up from 19,000 in 2023. To support this growth, we installed 11,770 EV chargers, bringing our total to 23,000 chargers at 50 delivery stations. Ours is now the largest private charging network in the United States. We delivered a total of 1.5 billion packages using electric vehicles around the world last year. We also achieved our goal to have more than 10,000 electric delivery vehicles in India by 2025 ahead of schedule. 

3. We’re protecting biodiversity through better building practices, responsibly sourcing agricultural and mineral commodities, and supporting nature conservation initiatives around the world.

Recognizing how important biodiversity is to the health of the planet, communities, and our business, we’ve protected or restored 49,000 hectares of land through biodiversity- and nature-related contributions over the past five years through the Right Now Climate Fund. We’ve disbursed more than $67 million to conservation projects around the world, adding five new projects to the fund’s portfolio in 2024.

We’re also evaluating habitat conditions and site designs at 24 Amazon building locations in Europe, the United States, and India. This includes prioritizing designs that avoid and reduce habitat loss, and exploring how AI can help us scale these practices.

Finally, Whole Foods Market has been ranked as a top retailer on the Friends of the Earth’s Bee-Friendly Retailer Scorecard, which ranks how well U.S. grocery stores protect bees and biodiversity from toxic pesticides.

4. We’re preventing waste whenever possible across Amazon. 

We want to reduce waste across Amazon, from our corporate offices to our fulfillment centers. That means we integrate circular practices to extend the life of the products we sell, and divert waste from landfills by reducing, reusing, recycling, or composting materials.

Two key metrics help us track our waste reduction tactics: The first is our waste diversion rate, which measures the waste we reroute from landfills with processes like recycling and composting. In 2024, that number was 83%—up from 82% in 2023 and 79% in 2022. The second is our landfill diversion rate, which tracks the materials we divert from landfills via recycling and incineration with energy recovery (a process that involves burning waste to generate heat that can be used to produce electricity or steam). In 2024, we achieved a landfill diversion rate of 85%—up from 84% in 2023 and 82% in 2022.

5. We’re making progress toward our AWS goal of becoming water positive, returning more water to communities than we use in our direct operations by 2030.

To reach this goal, we’re using more sustainable water sources, improving water use efficiency across our operations, reusing water as much as possible, and supporting water replenishment projects for communities and the environment. We measure our data centers’ water efficiency using the water use effectiveness (WUE) metric. In 2024, we achieved 0.15 L/kWh WUE for our data centers, which is a 17% improvement from 2023.

We are now 53% of the way toward meeting our water positive goal and we’re currently investing in 23 water replenishment projects globally. This means we’ve returned more than 4 billion liters of water to communities from active replenishment projects, with plans to increase this number in coming years.

6. We’re improving our ability to embed respect for human rights into our business activities and decision making. 

Amazon’s operations impact millions of people worldwide. We continue to improve our approach to human rights as we identify, assess, prioritize, and address human rights risks throughout our business activities. These assessments strengthen our understanding of human rights issues and help us look around corners and prepare to address emerging risks.

One of the many tools in our risk management toolbox is social audits. We conduct audits of our suppliers on a regular basis covering labor rights, ethical behavior, environment, and health and safety issues; we then work with suppliers to remediate any identified issues. In 2024, we expanded our audit program to include third-party labor, service, and not-for-resale goods providers in our logistics, warehousing, and construction supply chains.

Another important component of our approach is improving access to effective grievance mechanisms and remedies for rights holders. We welcome anyone—including employees, contractors, suppliers, customers, and community members—to share concerns with us through our Human Rights and Environmental Complaints Form, available in 19 languages and dialects and accessible globally.

We’re also looking ahead.

Climate change is bigger than Amazon, and we need everyone working together to solve it. In addition to providing tools and resources to help others drive down their own emissions, we will continue to work directly with suppliers, especially those whose emissions contribute to Amazon’s operations.

And we’ll continue tackling some of the world’s most urgent and environmental challenges to create a lasting, positive impact for our customers, employees, communities, and the planet. Progress is not always linear, but it is ongoing. We remain steadfast as we invent and adapt our way to achieving net-zero carbon emissions.

Learn more about Amazon's commitment to sustainability and read our 2024 Sustainability Report in full.

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