The health of our planet is something we care deeply about. Last year, Amazon co-founded the Climate Pledge—a commitment to be net zero carbon across our business by 2040. Since then, we’ve made good progress and we’re not slowing down. We continue to invent more sustainable solutions across all areas of our business, including Devices & Services.
How We’re Helping Customers Reduce Your Impact on the Environment
We’ve challenged ourselves to think differently—we believe we should focus on the energy usage of devices once they’re in your home. On average, more than half of the total carbon footprint of Devices comes from when the devices are actually in use. And that’s why we don’t just want to reduce our own impact on the environment, we want to help our customers do so as well.
We're excited to announce today that we are first consumer electronics company to commit to addressing the use phase of our devices through renewable energy investments. We are building new wind and solar farms to produce clean energy equivalent to the electricity used by every customer’s Echo device. We are building our first Devices wind and solar farms In the U.S., and we have a bold goal to continue building new renewable energy projects until we account for the energy consumption of all Amazon devices.
In addition, we are working hard to make our devices energy efficient because it’s good for the planet and our customers. That’s why we’ve added a Low Power Mode feature to all new wall-powered Echo and Fire TV devices that reduces their lifetime energy consumption by using less power during periods of inactivity. We’ll also be rolling out free over-the-air updates to bring Low Power Mode to additional devices already in customers’ homes.
Other Ways We’re Making Our Devices More Sustainable
All Echo and Fire TV devices launched today will include 100% post-consumer recycled fabric, 100% recycled die-cast aluminium, and 30-50% post-consumer recycled plastic depending on the product. We have even incorporated 50% post-consumer recycled plastic into certain power adapters shipping with our devices. In fact, the recycled materials used in our devices launching in 2020 could fill over 800 garbage trucks worth of plastics, fabrics, and aluminium.
Going forward, we are working to source 100% of the wood fibre in device packaging from responsibly managed forests or recycled sources. We’re also reducing waste, eliminating over 27 million plastic bags from our device packaging in 2020 alone. The packaging for the Echo and Fire TV devices announced today is made from more than 97% wood fibre base materials sourced from responsibly managed forests.
We also have existing programmes—like the Amazon Recycling, Devices Pre-Owned, and Trade-In programmes or our frustration-free packaging programme—that address the beginning and end of our products’ lifecycles. Through our sustainable packaging initiatives, we have globally reduced the weight of outbound packaging by 33% and eliminated more than 900,000 tons of materials from landfills.
Climate Pledge Friendly
The Echo and Fire TV devices we announced today will be among the first products to receive the Climate Pledge Friendly badge on Amazon.com as part of a new programme in the US that makes it easier for customers to identify and shop for sustainable products. All Echo and Fire TV devices announced today are certified by the Carbon Trust and will carry its ‘Reducing CO2’, a certification that demonstrates a reduction in the carbon footprint of products, year-over-year. This is measured by creating a life cycle assessment for both the current product and its prior generation (or prior year) baseline, and assessing the greenhouse gas emissions for each. This certification rewards our de-carbonisation efforts in line with The Climate Pledge. For more information, click here.
What’s Next
Climate change isn’t something one company can solve alone. We are thrilled to see others’ momentum, and we will continue to invent in this area. Learn more about what we’re doing here.
Find out more about sustainability at Amazon.
