Amazon has accomplished a major milestone, eliminating plastic pillows from its shipping, replacing them with recycled paper packing.

Amazon has been working to improve its fulfillment operations, phasing out single use plastics for more sustainable alternatives. Air pillows, while useful, comprise a large portion of those single use plastics. In a blog post, the company revealed how much progress it has made in eliminating them.

Across our European fulfillment network we replaced our single-use plastic delivery bags and air pillows with 100% recyclable paper and cardboard packaging that can be recycled in household recycling in 2022. In Europe, this—combined with other initiatives—has helped us avoid more than 1 billion single-use plastic delivery bags since 2019. Meanwhile, in India, we removed single-use, thin-film plastic packaging originating from Amazon’s fulfillment network in the country since 2020. In Japan, except for some services such as chilled or frozen products, we stopped packing items in single-use plastic delivery bags for orders from Amazon fulfillment centers.

As of October 2024, we’ve removed all plastic air pillows from our delivery packaging used at our global fulfillment centers. As part of this transition,we were able to quickly expand our use of paper filler made from 100% recycled content across North America to replace plastic air pillows, our biggest reduction in plastic packaging in North America to date.

The company is also creating new types of paper-based packaging to ensure products can be delivered safely.

We continue to innovate to create new paper-based packaging for our products. This includes the new paper-padded envelope with a shock-absorbent, 100% paper-based lining, available in Europe. The ridged lining keeps products in the envelope safe, and absorbs stress put on the package during its journey to customers’ homes. This new paper-padded envelope is 100% recyclable in household recycling.

The company’s transition to paper-based packaging also includes retooling its machines to work with paper instead of plastic.

We have retrofitted more than 120 of our automated packing machines that made plastic bags to now create made-to-fit paper bags across the U.S. We implemented this in more than 20 fulfillment centers, helping us avoid more than 130 million plastic bags this year. Through our testing and learning, we have developed a new generation of this machine. Updates allow for us to pack larger products, helping to increase the number of products that can be packaged in paper bags by 20%. New sensors on the machine help us measure all dimensions of a product, allowing us to create more correctly sized packaging, reducing the amount of paper we use. Variations of this automated, packaging technology, which cuts made-to-fit paper bags for individual items, are being used in North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia.

As the largest e-commerce company in the world, Amazon has provided a good example demonstrating that it is possible to use sustainable methods and stop using plastics.