Dec. 15 (UPI) -- Online retail giant Amazon produced 465 million pounds of plastic waste last year, Oceana said in a report published Tuesday.
The trash came mainly from air pillow or bubble wrap used to prevent items from moving within a shipping box, plastic mailers or plastic-lined paper shipping envelopes, according to Oceana's report.
"Amazon has a plastic problem," the nonprofit conservation group report concluded. "Up to 22.44 million pounds of its plastic packaging ended up in the world's freshwater and marine ecosystems as pollution in 2019: the equivalent to one delivery van's worth every 70 minutes and, given the projected rapid growth of Amazon and the e-commerce industry, this plastic pollution seems likely to increase dramatically in the future if steps are not taken to effectively address it."
Amazon has disputed the report's findings.
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The company told The Verge the 465 million pound figure was overblown by over 350 percent, and that it only uses about a quarter of Oceana's estimate, which would equate to about 116 million pounds of plastic.
In a sustainability report in September focusing on the company's Climate Pledge to be a net zero carbon business by 2040, Amazon mentioned plastic film as difficult to recycle at curbside recycling programs. The company did not reveal its total plastic footprint. The company said it would launch plastic film recycling at more than 55 fulfillment centers across its network to recycle more than 7,000 tons of plastic film a year in addition to 1,500 tons of plastic being recycled each year in Europe.
Still, Oceana has stood by its findings, and recommended in its report that Amazon focus less on recycling plastic and more on reducing its plastic use.
"Amazon must focus on plastic reduction and reuse and stop promoting false, unproven and ineffective solutions like 'recyclability' or directing its customers to take on the responsibility of trying to find a way to recycle its plastic film that local municipalities won't accept and that recycling markets essentially don't want."
Oceana added that Amazon India's transition away from single-use plastic in June, after 16-year-old Delhi resident Aditya Dubey petitioned for the change in October 2019, shows the reduction is possible.
"Amazon has already demonstrated that it can swiftly reduce its use of plastic packaging on a large scale when it eliminated non-recyclable plastic packaging from fulfillment centers in India," Oceana said in the report.
Oceana used data from packaging industry analysts in China, the United States, Britain, Japan, India, Germany, Canada, Brazil, Spain and Mexico and market research data for the report.
Globally, total plastic packaging in the e-commerce industry is estimated at over 2 billion pounds.
"Plastic is a major source of pollutions for the world's oceans," the report said. "Scientists now estimate billions of pounds of plastic washes into the ocean every year. Plastic packaging harms marine life and biodiversity when it enters the marine environment. Sea turtles and other animals mistake the kind of plastic used by Amazon -- such as plastic bags -- for food. Recent studies estimated that 90% of all seabirds and more than half of all sea turtle species studied -- 52% -- were found to have ingested plastic."
