‘India serves as a testing ground for scalable solutions’

Swetha Ramdas, principal, APAC sustainability, Amazon tells Sudipto Dey in an email interview that the company is delivering orders with reduced or no packaging in over 300 cities in India. Edited excerpts

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Amazon signed The Climate Pledge as part of its decarbonisation and net-zero transition. How does it align with plans to make Amazon India’s packaging sustainable?

At Amazon India, sustainability is deeply tied to our broader commitment of reaching net-zero by 2040 under The Climate Pledge and packaging is one of the areas where we are making a visible difference.

We have taken a significant step where nearly half of customer orders in India are now shipped from its fulfilment network in their original packaging, with just an address label added by Amazon, or with reduced packaging.

Responding to this, we have rapidly scaled our ‘Ships in Product Packaging’ programme, increasing orders shipped without added packaging by over 80% since 2021.

Alongside, we have made significant strides in eliminating single-use plastic. Since replacing thin-film single-use plastic with paper and cardboard-based packaging in 2019, we have avoided 9,100 metric tonne of plastic packaging in India.

Today, we are making deliveries with reduced or no packaging in over 300 cities across India, a significant leap from just nine cities in 2019, and this continues to grow.

Are there any India-specific innovations that have been tried and tested in other markets?