To green its image, Amazon is trying delivery by cargo bike in London

Amazon will make its delivery people pedal. The e-commerce giant plans to launch an experiment in London, where some deliveries will now be made using cargo bikes. This “micromobility” hub, as the company calls it, will settle in Hackney (in the London suburbs) to carry out so-called “last mile” deliveries in a greener and more responsible way. This development follows a similar experiment that has been taking place in France since 2021.

XXL cargo bikes

The machines, which are reminiscent of mini-vans with pedals, should allow Amazon partners to circulate in the low emission zones of the capital without obstacle. The company expects more than 5 million deliveries per year to places where internal combustion engines are no longer welcome. It should be noted that it is not directly Amazon employees who will make the deliveries, but carriers who have established partnerships with the platform.

“Amazon is moving towards a global zero-carbon future. One way to do this is to transform our transportation networks. Our new e-cargo bikes, walkers and growing fleet of electric delivery vehicles will help us make more deliveries without impacting the environment than ever before.“, explained a British Amazon official.

Circulate without polluting

The bikes used will be marketed by the EAV brand. Unlike consumer cargo bikes, these are not equipped with a simple trailer, but with a real trunk with a capacity of several cubic meters. The machine will have four wheels and will of course be equipped with an electric motor that will allow you to climb at a speed of 25 km/h without straining your legs too much. “Tackling transport-related emissions is essential if we are to achieve zero carbon. We are very happy to have worked with Amazon to help take traditional pickup trucks off the streets and replace them with electric cargo bikes.“, welcomed the Hackney mobility and transport assistant.

If this decision should make it possible to reduce emissions linked to the transport of goods in the British capital, which we can only applaud, it is far from settling all the disputes linked to Amazon in the field of the environment. Tackling last-mile delivery is a good start, but the rest of Amazon’s supply chain is far from eco-neutral. Despite efforts to run many centers of operation on renewable energy, Amazon still weighs heavily on the planet.

The rest of the logistics must follow the trend

By the company’s own admission, in 2020, the carbon footprint of its operations “increased by 19%“. A figure that covers a complex reality. The energies used to supply the Amazon system may be clean, but the artificialization of the soil as well as road and air transport continue to weigh heavily on the firm’s carbon footprint. D ‘according to figures communicated by the site and relayed by Reporterre, a logistics warehouse like that of Brétigny would add 500 additional trucks on already congested roads.

Energy, whether renewable or not, does not give a complete idea of ​​the ecological impact of an activity. The appearance of many logistics centers requires the creation of new structures on previously virgin soil. The AWS branch of Amazon, which rents computing capacity to companies, is used in particular to help oil companies extract fossil resources. A point that had already worried Amazon employees in 2019.