On the heels of the holiday season, consumers may have noticed something different in their Amazon package. The shipping giant made a big splash in sustainability by cutting a large portion of its plastic packaging in North America. The company announced last June that it is swapping 95% of the plastic air pillows from delivery packaging in the region with paper filler.
According to Amazon, this is its largest plastic packaging reduction effort in North America and will avoid nearly 15 billion plastic air pillows annually. A move that positions the company for a more sustainable future.
To understand the effect of this initiative, Packaging OEM digs into the sustainability impacts of paper filler, why this adjustment meets Amazon’s Climate Pledge, how the company incorporates artificial intelligence, and what this change means to machine builders.

Sustainability: The paper advantage
Amazon’s journey to paper filler began in October 2023 when the company announced its first ever U.S. automated fulfillment center in Ohio to eliminate plastic delivery packaging. This facility streamlined paper filler research and utilized a third-party engineering firm to discover that the eco-friendly solution offered the same protection to products as its previous answer, plastic air pillows.
Armed with research results, Amazon quickly moved to transition to paper filler for its packaging. The retailer’s teams collaborated with suppliers to source the product made from 100% recycled content. At the same time, Amazon employees coordinated the transition across hundreds of fulfillment centers throughout the United States to swap out machinery and host employee training sessions for the new systems and machines.
The move was quickly implemented. And for Prime Day in July 2024, nearly all of customer deliveries did not contain plastic air pillows, Amazon said in a statement. Another plus on the sustainability side is that paper fillers are curbside recyclable, making it easier for consumers to recycle at home.
“I’m proud of the cross-Amazon collaboration to make a positive impact on the customer delivery experience with easier to recycle materials,” said Pat Linder, Amazon vice president of mechatronics and sustainable packaging, in a statement. “It’s a great example of how we thoughtfully test and scale new solutions to protect our customer experience.”
Amazon has been working on increasing sustainability since 2014. Their efforts include reducing packaging, increasing recyclability, all while ensuring products get undamaged to customers. You can view Amazon’s sustainability report, by clicking here.

Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund and artificial intelligence
Amazon’s corporate venture program that invests in companies is called the Climate Pledge Fund. This initiative finances companies to accelerate Amazon’s path to meeting the commitments of the Climate Pledge. Through this fund, Amazon is piloting new technology with Glacier, a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics company, which was co-founded and led by Rebecca Hu and Areeba Malik.
With the Glacier partnership, Amazon is transforming recycling using AI and robotics. Glacier’s AI-powered robots automate the sorting of recyclables while collecting real-time data on recycling streams for companies.
“After researching a variety of climate solutions, we discovered that applying novel advances in AI and robotic automation to help the recycling industry run more efficiently is a powerful way to reduce waste, which has a direct link to reducing carbon emissions,” Hu said in a statement.
Only 21% of residential recyclables in the United States are recycled, noted Amazon officials. This can be due to a lack of adequate recycling infrastructure, which Glacier aims to solve.
“Nearly 70 million tons of recycling are processed annually in the U.S. alone,” Malik said in a statement. “This is already an immense undertaking, but we can recover so much more material by building accessible automation processes and then scaling it across our country’s recycling infrastructure.”
One Glacier robot can prevent over 10 million items per year from ending up in landfills, according to the company. This technology can also increase the use of recycled materials in packaging.

Impact on machine builders
The retail giant’s eco-friendly shift has implications for machine builders, presenting both challenges and opportunities. First, the challenges include a shift in machinery demand, the need to retrofit existing equipment, and increased competition. For more about retrofitting existing equipment, click here.
Opportunities include the ability for machine builders to innovate and create efficient systems for paper filler production and handling, along with possibilities to build training programs and sustainable solutions for the packaging line.
At the end of the day, builders that can innovate and quickly adapt to these evolving eco-friendly needs will be in a good position to thrive in a market that is increasingly focused on sustainability and efficiency.