Amazon recently disclosed its 2018 carbon emissions – the first disclosure of its kind in the company’s history – and it turns out they’re basically a fossil fuel company as far as environmental impact goes.
As reported by Business of Fashion, the company was responsible for “44.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent” in 2018 — a number that includes “purchased electricity and indirect emissions” like “the cost of producing Amazon’s packaging and electronic devices,” as well as things like the “emissions generated by customer trips to retail stores such as Whole Foods.”
(The astronomical figure — more than FedEx, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Target and pretty much everyone else — is somehow still about “38 percent less than rival Walmart,” so there’s that.)
As the story noted, the company has long “frustrated climate advocates by refusing to participate in increasingly common corporate social responsibility and environmental disclosures,” but recently, “employees and shareholders have been pressuring the company to change.” And it looks like they just might.
Following the disclosure, the company committed to “powering all of its business operations by renewable energy sources by 2030, and achieving carbon neutrality a decade later.”
“We’ve been in the middle of the herd on this issue and we want to move to the forefront,” feudal overlord, er, I mean CEO, Jeff Bezos said. “We want to be leaders.”
…Cool?
You can read more about it at Business of Fashion.
