back to article Amazon: Our carbon footprint went up 19% last year but we grew even more than that, so 'carbon intensity' is down

Amazon's carbon emissions grew by almost a fifth last year as its business was buoyed by a pandemic-related sales spike and an ever-growing shift to online activity. The mega corp's total footprint for 2020 was a breath-taking 60.64 million metric tonnes of CO2e – up 19 per cent on the year before. The figures, published today …

  1. 9Rune5
    Pirate

    Big is better (?)

    About two years ago I watched a Swedish documentary that covered several hypothesis as to why so many fish has disappeared from the Baltic sea.

    One of the concerns raised were that the fleet of smaller fishing vessels were being replaced by large factory trawlers that were a lot more efficient. They fished so much fish that a lot of it was sold as feedstock to salmon breeders.

    They confronted one of the ship-owners and he argued that if you looked at CO2 emissions (per ton of fish caught), their fleet was actually _better_ for the environment -- climate change and all that.

    I thought that was quite illuminating. I am not entirely convinced yet that we as a society are solving the right problems. I think we can all agree on that we need to sacrifice such jerks into the nearest volcano to appease the Climate Gods (Ruffin and Pussface).

    1. b0llchit Silver badge
      Mushroom

      Re: Big is better (?)

      I think we can all agree on that we need to sacrifice such jerks into the nearest volcano...

      Please do this with 90+% of the world's population. That solves several problems simultaneously: a) it removes jerks with absolute disregard of nature and lacking any type of common sense, b) overpopulation and too high resource use and c) significant reduction of noise and light pollution.

      1. SundogUK Silver badge

        Re: Big is better (?)

        Seriously? To fix these problems, even if they aren't really problems, you would murder six billion plus people?

        1. nijam Silver badge

          Re: Big is better (?)

          > Seriously? To fix these problems, even if they aren't really problems, you would murder six billion plus people?

          Seriously, that's about how much population reduction would be necessary to get a sustainbable planet. How you go about is an unsolved problem.

    2. Filippo Silver badge

      Re: Big is better (?)

      "I am not entirely convinced yet that we as a society are solving the right problems."

      I don't see much evidence of problem-solving so far; not for the big-picture problems. CO2 is still increasing, species are still going extinct, wealth distribution is ever more lopsided, etc.

      I wish I could say that at least we're trying to address those, but actually we haven't even really cracked the problem of how to discuss problems rationally (as a society); I mean, most discussions about that sort of stuff turn into name-calling very quickly - sometimes it's fairly refined name-calling, but still it's not anything that's going to yield a viable solution.

      And even if we could figure out solutions, another problem we haven't solved is how to make plans for more than 10 years or so in the future, and stick to them.

      I don't have solutions either. Hopefully, someone will come up with viable fusion power or some other miracle before it's too late.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: viable fusion power or some other miracle before it's too late

        apparently it already is too late (ironically, snow-ball effect is already in motion), so... so... let's do what humans are best at: let's have a fucking party NOW, before the world goes to hell! :(

    3. rcxb1

      Re: Big is better (?)

      > the fleet of smaller fishing vessels were being replaced by large factory trawlers that were a lot more efficient. They fished so much fish

      Don't those countries have quotas/limits on their fishing industries? If so, no more fish should be getting caught, overall. If not, their problems have only just begun. We've long since past the point where humans could fish the worlds oceans to extinction of all profitable species if there were no regulations preventing it.

      1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

        Re: Big is better (?)

        The quotas have been demonstrated to be a poor way to reduce overfishing: ships just dump the excess but dead fish in the sea before making port. The Icelandic system, which gives fishermen a stake in the fishery, seems to be a better approach but is probably more difficult to role out across multiple states.

        Still, we haven't got rogue Chinese trawlers fishing there. Yet.

        1. EricB123 Bronze badge

          Re: Big is better (?)

          Let's hope the Chinese don't read The Register.

  2. b0llchit Silver badge
    Coat

    Next logo design

    Amazon is in the talks with several global designers to make a new logo. It is said to support more green colors and uses 45% less ink on the packaging cartons. The ink savings, together with the green color will save an estimated 3% CO2 equivalent on Amazon's account. Sources did mention some export of environmental impact because the carton needs to be pre-treated with some new chemicals for the green ink to stick. This carton treatment will probably be outsourced to the Asian carton production sites with the source trees being imported from Finish and Swedish forests, which should last at least 30 more years.

    An Amazon spokesperson told us that they expect to be both CO2 and carton neutral by 2050. "We are always working hard to do our best.". Questions about how much CO2 and equivalents have been outsourced went unanswered.

    1. Martin Gregorie

      Re: Next logo design

      Never mind the logo - that's just window dressing.

      What about doing something positive, such as only using:

      - recyclable or compostable packaging materials

      - couriers with electric delivery vehicles.

      1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

        Re: Next logo design

        What about dumping the free shipping option for Prime customers? Until weconsumers are forced, quite literally, to pay for the consequences of our actions, how can be expected to change?

        1. nijam Silver badge

          Re: Next logo design

          > free shipping option for Prime customers

          You mean the shipping option that the Prime subscription pays for? Yeah, there's a streaming service thrown in, but like all TV stations (streamed or broadcast), Sturgeon's Law applies.

          1. EricB123 Bronze badge

            Re: Next logo design

            After watching some of the content on Amazon video, maybe the notion that the world is coning to an end soon doesn't sound so bad after all.

      2. Drew Scriver

        Re: Next logo design

        The post about the new logo was probably satire...

  3. bombastic bob Silver badge
    Megaphone

    It's ok, we're Amazon, having our cake and eating it too

    I think the title says it all.

    Either

    a) Amazon takes the position that CO2 is bad [which I do not believe, I might add] and does REAL reductions,

    or

    b) They should just be honest about what they're doing and stop acting like smug liberals, trying to justify it with a tap-dancing "scientist"

    If you want to talk about science, and then use it to justify a "the solution to pollution is dilution" type of argument, you're only going to make yourself look like a GINORMOUS HYPOCRITE.

    My personal belief is that CO2 is insignificant to any kind of climate change, not only because it's just 0.04% of the atmosphere (and in equilibrium), but because it does not absorb the IR frequencies (in any significant amount) to prevent black body radiation from cooling the earth at night. But I'll move along.

    Be as it may a lot of governments STILL insist on controlling CO2. So if Amazon is trying to justify that it's ok if THEY emit it, because [insert excuse here], they're just trying to be treated "special" and be given "special exemptions", like some kind of 'corporate welfare' or a 2-tiered form of justice (i.e. one regulation for ME, and another for THEE).

    Maybe Bezos should just build a NUCLEAR REACTOR with power output equal to Amazon's consumption. Then the carbon footprint will be ZERO.

  4. elsergiovolador Silver badge

    How to jump on the bandwagon?

    It seems like carbon trading is a new gold fever.

    Is it already reserved for big bois or is there a place for a small guy developing a trading platform?

    Let's say you find a company willing to get rid of their carbon footprint. You buy it from them and where would you sell it?

    Do you need to be "in the circle" of people who came up with this?

  5. CountCadaver Silver badge

    Politically motivated "Investigation" by SEPA, to quiet the media....which of course will find that its been disposed off properly.

    Don't see any complaints here about the skip per day many supermarker stores fills with food waste (and much much more over the Xmas period (and when I say period I mean from late August to New Year....who eats mincemeat pies in August/September? Result being we chucked out shelves and shelves out every night for weeks on end when they inevitably went off months before Xmas....)

    Also "former" employee....no mention of why he is a former employee....

    Also manufacturers often require unsold stock to be destroyed for retailer credit rather than returned, then there is the quantities of faulty products, counterfeit products, damaged in transit products that aren't fit for resale (would you want to buy headphones someone else had had on their head?....not me for sure...)

    But hey why bother doing any investigation when we can just quote tabloid papers and "light news" channels like STV....

    Shame as the register used to do serious investigations and actually look into what was going on, rather than just copy and pasting from other sources....seems standards are slipping...be as bad as the BBC at this rate....

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    devil's advocate question

    I hate Amazon. Any company that rakes in so much money and yet treats its employees like used bog roll instead of sharing that profit with the employees who made all that profit possible should be burnt to the ground with extreme prejudice, preferably with its executive management locked inside.

    That said, could an argument be made that, despite Amazon's ginormous carbon footprint, might the overall carbon picture be less bad than it would be if Amazon's customers each went out (in cars, of course, because ... reasons) and bought their whatever instead of having it delivered in trucks/vans that, one assumes, cover multiple locations on a somewhat efficient route?

    Not that it will matter much now, as lockdowns are unlocked and people will both go out to buy whatever AND have Amazon deliver whatever else, but I still wonder.

    1. elsergiovolador Silver badge

      Re: devil's advocate question

      You can also argue that Amazon pays a pittance so that employees can't afford too many things and thus the carbon footprint is limited...

      1. EricB123 Bronze badge

        Re: devil's advocate question

        I was feeling a bit down this morning, but after reading your post I realized that Amazon mistreating their employees is actually for the common good. I feel much better now. Thank you.

    2. Craig 2

      Re: devil's advocate question

      Ahh, but the population's "carbon intensity" is also reducing if you use Amazon's skewed reasoning... We are buying more stuff but getting it delivered more efficiently. Instead of millions of individual journeys to consume, we now have a single entity making the majority of those journeys for us. /s

    3. doublelayer Silver badge

      Re: devil's advocate question

      Yes, that argument could be made, and that argument does work if your only metric is whether things could be worse. Yes, they could be. However, the actual metrics used will depend on your personal philosophy of how pollution is to be managed. Some people think that reduction in consumption is important, so Amazon's more efficient delivery of unneeded items is a negative for them. Some people think efficiency is needed, meaning some activities which are more efficient in getting the same result should be done instead, essentially asking "Could it be better" and if the answer is yes, basing their calculus on that. There are many other attitudes people can take for this, but if I tried to list them all, we'd be here all day. And there are a lot of people who think such things until they want something, and then all of that gets canceled.

      I don't even know how my own philosophy balances out, and I definitely don't know yours. Still, Amazon's argument doesn't sound very good to me. If you accept carbon emissions as a negative, then it sounds like "We are doing more of the negative thing, but we made more money from it". Phrased that way, it doesn't sound as nice. Of course, that has to be balanced against the benefits the customers get from that process and the benefits they would have gotten from the next best option, somehow valuing your utility, and now we're into that part of economics where you just have to make up numbers because nobody can tell you what they are.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The elephant in the room...

    Operational emissions are one thing, but what about the carbon and material footprint of all the excessive consumption companies like Amazon, Google enable and encourage?

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Thumb Down

      Re: The elephant in the room...

      I happen to like my freedom and do NOT need others deciding FOR me as to whether or not MY consumption is "excessive". Nor should "they" decide such things for ANYONE ELSE, either...

  8. This post has been deleted by its author

  9. Cliffwilliams44 Silver badge

    Good for Amazon! CO2 is a blessing! I like being warm! Ever been in the desert at night? Space is cold! CO2 is our blanket! We need it in case the sun has another minimal period, Volcanic eruptions, etc.! The Earth will never be Venus! Climate Change is a con game and all you fools are the Marks. Remember in the last Ice Age the UK was under several miles of ice!

    You might think this is sarcasm! IT IS NOT!

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Trollface

      Brawndo CO2 is good for plants.

      Heh. (I could not resist)

      (actually true, greenhouse growers sometimes pump CO2 into the greenhouses to increase plant growth - and this being the case, "biological equilibrium" is suggested for the planet as a whole)

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