Amazon’s Prime Day set records, but what does that mean for the environment?

Amazon’s Prime Day last week was its most successful ever, but at what cost?

The two-day event brought in a record $12.7 billion in sales, a 6.1% jump, according to Adobe Analytics. Every year, it seems, Prime Day gets bigger, but moving more product also comes with potential consequences, particularly for the environment. Amazon’s carbon footprint is concerning to climate activists, but also some of its own employees, who walked out over concerns about the company’s climate policy in May.

• Analysis from Greenly, a Paris-based carbon accounting firm, found that Prime Day 2022, which resulted in $11.9 billion, accounted for 1.2 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
• Greenly says that is equivalent to 271,191 gasoline-powered cars driven for one year; the individual annual emissions of 104,160 people in the UK; or 691,641 round-trip flights between Paris and New York.

“Most of the emissions of Amazon are not at Amazon, per se. They’re with the goods that are purchased and sold,” Greenly CEO Alexis Normand told Retail Brew. “They’re electrifying their fleet, they’re reducing packaging…et cetera, but they’re not accounting for their actual impact, which is the fact that they’re moving so many goods.”

The real problem: Carbon accounting is measured in three separate categories: Scope 1, which tracks direct emissions from an organization’s facilities; Scope 2, which covers emissions from electricity used; and Scope 3, which accounts for indirect emissions like those from suppliers.

• Kate Scarpa, director of sustainability PR at Amazon, told Retail Brew that Amazon has a goal to decarbonize its entire operations by 2040 across Scope 1, 2, and 3, and has been publishing Scope 3 data since 2019.
• However, Normand believes Amazon could be more forthcoming regarding the Scope 3 impact of third parties, which he says downplays the extent of their environmental impact.
• In Amazon’s latest sustainability report, Kara Hurst, VP of worldwide sustainability, said the company is “committed to supporting third parties in their own decarbonization efforts.”

The impact of Scope 3 emissions can be more closely examined when looking at the effects of popular product categories on the environment. For example, the production of a pair of jeans requires between 7,000 and 10,000 liters of water, or roughly 285 showers, according to Greenly. Also, the cotton used to make those jeans is often sourced from India and Africa, far away from where it will eventually be dyed, before being sent to Asia where it will be made and sold.

So, now what? Normand said a step in the right direction for Amazon, particularly if it takes its 2040 net-zero carbon neutrality pledge seriously, is to be more transparent regarding its Source 3 emissions. He said many suppliers know the carbon footprint of every product sold, so the information should be readily available.

• He mentioned that Amazon competitor Walmart fully reports its Source 3 emissions and, in 2017, launched a program called Project Gigaton to engage and encourage suppliers to reduce their carbon footprint.
• Normand added that Amazon could also give consumers the option of purchasing the same product at a higher price with the understanding that it’s sustainably sourced but might cost more. He also praised resale and secondhand shopping as a viable path forward.

“They’re the biggest company in this space, and everything we can criticize about mass consumption, we can criticize about Amazon,” Normand said. “Amazon clearly has the power to measure [emissions] for themselves, but they also have the power to make that information available to consumers.”