EUCLID, Ohio — An Amazon location in northeast Ohio will be the first to officially transition all packaging from plastic to paper.
Scott Maynard has been working at Amazon for two and half years now, and every day, he said he does something different. Now, the packaging he’ll be using has changed too.
“With the paper, it's a lot better material; it's easier to work with instead of plastic that sticks all over the place. Also, obviously the recycle fact of it,” Maynard said.
The Amazon Euclid fulfillment center is the first location to officially transition from plastic packaging to paper.
“It’s great to see our customers receiving the all paper packages for the first time,” said Mark Pfeifer, the Amazon principle program manager.
Every day, this location ships out 100,000 packages, which will now be packed in one of three ways: box, paper bag or a padded option.
That’s all done by their newly rebuilt machines. Each machine looks at the order catalog before scanning the products to detect their size, then packing them in what it decides is most efficient and lightweight.
There are still items that will be delivered in plastic, Amazon calls them “Ship in product packaging,” meaning they send out the item in the original packaging that they come in.
“These are products where Amazon hasn't added any additional packaging,” Pfeifer said.
Amazon says paper is recyclable and preferable to plastic, but is it more environmentally friendly?
“Most of them are not biodegradable. So, they end up in landfills, or worse, they end up in the environment somewhere,” said Joao Maia, a Case Western polymer science and engineering professor.
Maia agrees that plastic bags aren't good, but in terms of environmental impact, paper bags are worse.
“When you consider the impact, it's what we call from cradle to grave. The impact of making the paper that goes into the paper bags, the cutting of the trees, all the chemicals that are used in the making of the paper, the huge amounts of water that are used in making the paper,” Maia said.
Adding to pick one or the other really comes down to preference.
“So, in terms of environmental, in terms of total energetic and CO2 impact, plastic bags are better, but in terms of disposal at the end of life, paper bags are better. So, it's really an option,” Maia said.
At the end of the day, the customers get to decide as Amazon is asking for their reviews.
Since Euclid is the first facility to test out the paper packaging, if it goes well, then other facilities will do the same.
