Amazon has produced 599 million pounds of plastic waste in 2020, an Oceana report said. An estimated 23.5 million pounds of that plastic ended up in the world’s oceans, it said.
Plastic waste amid lockdown
In 2020, more Americans turned to Amazon amid COVID lockdowns. Amazon subsequently created more plastic packaging waste than ever, the report said.
Oceana estimates that “up to 23.5 million pounds” entered the world’s oceans.It is equivalent to dumping a delivery van payload of plastic into the oceans every 67 min.
Amazon claims flawed report
However, Amazon said that Oceana’s calculations are seriously flawed. “They have overestimated our plastics usage by more than 300% and use outdated assumptions about the sources of plastic waste entering our oceans.”
Oceana Senior Vice President Matt Littlejohn “said the group’s estimates were based on a combination of trade data and data sets from a scientific, peer-reviewed paper about the amount of plastic — about 11 percent — that ends up in aquatic ecosystems.”
