Amazon destroys millions of unsold products every year

Smartworld Team25/06/2021 Ore 12:33

While the digital attention of the past few weeks has led to is focused on prime day, New news revolves around Amazon. king of Jeff Bezos It ended up in the eye of the storm for its practices of “managing” goods in warehouses, with an investigation that caused discussion.

British television news channel, ITV News, has released a video shot at an Amazon warehouse in Dunfermline (Scotland), in which a covert camera. In the images, a questionable and not very ecological, though legal, practice is taking place. Comes full stacks of boxes with unsold products The destroyed. The report’s author, Richard Pallot, was able to locate the packages in question (marked with the word “destruct”) and follow them to recycling centers and even landfills.

Amazon Deposit

Within a week of April they were in the Scottish warehouse More than 120 thousand products destroyed. In the same period, the world’s largest e-commerce company donated around 28,000. However, Amazon is not directly responsible for this massive waste. There are many companies that sell their products on e-commerce platforms. Often they choose to keep the products in their warehouses to guarantee fast delivery and efficient for customers. The cost of deposits tends to increase over time. So if the item is not sold, it shows cheap to destroy them than keeping them in stock.

Destruction of new and working products

Part of products intended for destruction. belongs to the category of refund, hence the working goods. What’s even more stirring is that 50% of the articles are still in original packaging. This process involves transitioning directly from the production chain to waste. also in consignment to pulp valuables such as Dyson fans, hoover, tv, drone, macbook and ipad. A former employee also spoke about “depleting the supply of 20,000 masks for Covid-19 that were still sealed”.

“We are working to achieve the goal of zero product disposal. Our priority is to resell, donate to charity or recycle unsold products. No items are sent to landfills in the UK. As a last resort, we will send the items for energy recovery, but we are working hard to reduce the number of times this happens to zero,” the Seattle-based company said in a statement.

Also read: Amazon opens its first supermarket without a cashier

Amazon inquiries in the past

However, this practice is not new to Amazon. It was 2019 when an investigation was conducted by a French TV channel M6 had brought this situation to the fore while disclosing information about destruction of 3 million objects operated by the company in the previous year. again in 2019, by an investigation green Peace Announced that the same practice had been implemented in Germany. In particular, what happened at the Vinson site was reported. Products were sorted in their original packaging and then proceeded for their destruction, with at least one truck disposing of unsold goods each week.

Also read: Amazon woos developers for its App Store

environmental issue

In June 2020, Amazon announced the creation of a fund of 2 billion dollars To invest in the transition to a low-carbon economy. waste andEnvironmental effect The themes of the entire production chain are topics dealt with extensively in this historical moment. The special emphasis on the urgency of these problems results in the search for suitable policies and measures to address them. If on the one hand we look at the publicly presented investments, on the other hand, situations similar to what happened on Amazon continue to emerge.

Destruction of products in other companies

Amazon won’t be the only company practicing this questionable methodology with unsold goods. in the field of technologyApple is a hero with similar processes. The fashion world has also seen a great deal of destruction of goods, which seem to be taking shape as a Custom. some luxury brand, as well as brand fast fashion, apply the same practice as Bezos’s e-commerce. Stefano Ricci, H&M, Burberry have been accused (or publicly stated) of burning unsold items. Later, in 2018, the volume of unsold products destroyed $38 million.