Amazon’s iconic packaging box for packages is losing ground. In its place, the giant favors a strategy without cardboard, or with cardboard envelopes and paper bags, all thanks to technological progress. Reporting.
To respond to environmental issues and show its customers that it is making efforts to waste less and reduce its carbon footprint, Amazon has focused on reducing the quantity of packaging in the broad sense. This is the main lesson we learned from our visit to the American firm’s Operations Innovation Lab, located in Vercelli, an hour’s drive from Turin and Milan, in Italy. Let’s see how this all comes together, in numbers and from a technological point of view.
Amazon reduces the size of its packages and limits the sending of boxes
Over the past five years, Amazon has invested more than 700 million euros in Europe to develop new innovations in its distribution centers. Item sorting machine, astonishing universal robotic labeler or automated packaging technology are all new XXL devices that help Jeff Bezos’ firm save on packaging, which is found everywhere in our trash.
Today, on the Old Continent, Amazon’s progress is, whatever one may think of the juggernaut that the company represents, rather undeniable. From now on, one in two shipped packages is either delivered in small packaging or recyclable packaging, for example a paper bag or a cardboard envelope, or delivered without any packaging other than that of the manufacturer directly.
“ These numbers exceed my expectations », Explains Pat Lindner, vice-president of Mechatronics and Eco-Responsible Packaging at Amazon, to Clubic. “ Customers should already be starting to realize that they are receiving more Amazon packages without unnecessary packaging. This is both important for us, for consumers, but also for the environment », he adds.
The manager confirms it to us: Amazon does not intend to stop there. “ We will continue to invest in this area », he promises, while also mentioning the likely imminent generalization of the shipping of all the products in the same basket in a single packaging. And the company also works with its partners, encouraging them to rethink their packaging. Amazon makes all this possible thanks to the machines that we were able to discover from its Vercelli laboratory.
On some machines, Amazon has reduced the amount of packaging by more than 26 grams per shipment on average.
The Amazon Operations Innovation Lab is teeming with machines, each one as impressive as the next. We have already introduced you to the URL, theUniversal Robotic Labeler, a new labeler capable of adapting the size of labels according to the size of the packaging of the packages to be sent, even those with the most daring shapes. The machine makes it possible to limit the sending of boxes.
The Universal Item Sorter (UIS or Universal Item Sorter) is capable of sorting thousands of items every day, using cutting-edge wireless technology which allows items to be transported in 40 bins adapted to 40 different destinations, limiting the efforts of employees and allowing, again and again , to save precious time for Amazon.
Another machine, currently being installed, developed in the United States and now tested at the Vercelli center, is making a lasting impression. This is an automated packaging technology, which makes it possible to create, in complete safety for the employee (accidents leading to sick leave have generally fallen by 60% at Amazon since 2019), tailor-made paper bags for small orders. Video games, office supplies or socks, the machine uses lightweight paper packaging, 100% recyclable, which reduces the quantity of packaging by more than 26 grams per shipment on average.
“ When we use this machine, the package is about 90% lighter
than a similar cardboard box », explains Pat Lindner, who reminds us that “ historically, the machine is made to manufacture
plastic packaging. » But Amazon engineers managed to convert it into a fully recyclable paper machine.
With smaller packages, fewer boxes, lighter and thinner packaging, Amazon has reduced the weight of its packages per shipment by 41% on average since 2015. 2 million tonnes of packaging materials were thus avoided.
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