Amazon Gradually Abandons Cardboard Boxes and Turns to Plastic Packaging

Amazon, the largest online e-commerce company in the United States, is the online retailer with the widest range of goods in the world and the world's second-largest internet company, as well as the largest parcel carrier in North America.

However, according to a latest research report by chemical industry research firm WoodMackenzie, Amazon may be abandoning cardboard boxes in favor of lightweight plastic packaging. If this decision is confirmed, the paper packaging industry is bound to be affected.

1. Cheap and environmentally friendly: lightweight plastics have significant advantages over paper packaging

To date, Amazon is the largest parcel carrier in North America, and a company of this size is enough to influence large-scale parcel packaging trends and demand. The company is very likely to set a trend for the North American parcel shipping industry to switch to lightweight plastic packaging.

As liquefied natural gas feedstock becomes increasingly cheap, US plastics output has surged. The American Chemistry Council (ACC) is tracking 700 new investments by US companies in the plastics products industry.

At the same time, Amazon also pointed out that using plastic packaging can reduce energy and natural resource consumption and carbon dioxide in the production process, as well as reduce the vehicles needed for transport.

WoodMackenzie analyst Connell-French said that using lightweight materials can reduce the waste generated at the end of life, and even if the recycling rate is very low, flexible packaging tends to produce less material loss compared with other materials.

Because lightweight plastics are cheap and environmentally friendly, MarketWatch predicts that by 2022 the global lightweight plastic packaging market will exceed US$130.05 billion. Raw materials such as plastic film, aluminum foil, paper and bioplastics can be used for flexible packaging.

1. Amazon is developing new packaging using petroleum by-products and natural stone powder as raw materials

Nevertheless, the change should be slow and gradual, because traditional carriers may be unwilling to spend effort on lightweight plastics with uncertain application scope but great product flexibility.

But at present Amazon is still developing an environmentally friendly synthetic paper packaging (usually polyethylene/polypropylene pressed paper), which is fully recyclable:

First, it uses the petroleum by-product polypropylene and natural stone powder to make paper, without wood pulp and without damaging green plants;

Second, polypropylene synthetic paper can be recycled many times to remake base paper of the same quality. Even if it is disposed of as garbage, it can be completely burned without producing toxic gases, meeting the environmental protection requirements of no secondary pollution;

Third, it causes almost no industrial pollution in production. Amazon confirmed that after continuous improvement of its packaging solutions, its global packaging waste was reduced by 20% in 2018.

Finally, WoodMackenzie said that the total value of the US food end-use plastic packaging industry in 2018 is estimated at about US$16 billion, so the industry trend change led by Amazon is enormous.