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About a month ago, Jeff Bezos announced that his company, Amazon, donated 1 million dollars
towards the Australian fire relief efforts. For the average person, 1 million Australian
dollars or $690,000 US dollars is an extremely generous donation. Because let’s face it,
that’s a lot of money. But for Bezos, who’s wealth hovers around $110 billion, it’s
not. $690k is how much money he makes in roughly 3 minutes. In the words of journalist Brian
Merchant, this is the equivalent of someone worth $50,000 gaining media headlines for
donating $30. And as we applaud Bezos for throwing us this chump change, his company
is in the shadows stepping on our throats. Amazon’s relentless hunger for growth continues
to generate environmental and social consequences across the United States and the globe. For
that reason, it’s important to take a step back and understand how Amazon’s business
practices create this environmental and worker strife. So today, we take on Amazon.
Mountains of cardboard and thousands of tons of carbon dioxide in the air. These are just
two of the environmental consequences of the convenience Amazon provides. The massive e-commerce
company exploded in size over the last decade, and with that size comes more shipping, processing,
web-storage, and a plethora of shiny new electronic toys. Each with their contribution to the
growing problem of climate change. So first, let’s start with one of the core strategies
of Amazon’s convenience-based business model: its tireless efforts to ship items from their
warehouses to customer homes as fast as possible. Although Amazon provides a spectrum of shipping
options that range from slow to fast, it’s now 150 million-plus prime members can enjoy
the perks of free one-day, or even two-hour shipping if they’re in the right location.
These extremely fast shipping models not only lead to more vans and trucks on the road but
also fuel a growing transformation in consumer behavior that trends towards overconsumption.
Amazon successfully eliminated all the barriers of shopping so that the instant gratification
of one-click shopping and quick shipping means that our distant wants can easily be treated
as our immediate needs. But Amazon claims that they are doing an environmental service
by streamlining this shopping process. They’re replacing the multitude of trips customers
might make to brick-and-mortar stores with the efficient route of a single Amazon delivery
van. While that may be true for Amazon’s slower shipping options, it’s not the case
for the Prime 2-day or fewer options. I did a whole video on online shopping, and needless
to say, Amazon is doing more harm than good. Their growing fleet of small vans and trucks
are adding to the rapid growth of the transportation sector’s emissions which sits at 29% of
United States’ total emissions, and according to a study by data analytics firm Fastmarkets,
online shopping added 1.5 million tons of cardboard demand to the market between 2014
and 2017. Civil Engineering Professor Ardeshi Faghri put it best in an interview with the
New York Times, “Online shopping has not helped the environment. It has made it worse.”
On top of creating a company that satisfies your every want in a matter of days or even
hours, Amazon also deals in the business of web services. Amazon’s data centers compete
head to head with Google’s and Microsoft’s for cloud and web hosting, but they are far
behind their competitors in terms of sustainability. Its data centers generate 44.5 megatonnes
of CO2e per year (Google is at 1.5 per year). While Amazon has announced a goal of reaching
100% renewable energy by 2030 and net-zero carbon by 2040, the specifics of their plans
are hard to find and progress towards reaching those goals seems slow. In addition, Amazon’s
rapid increase of data centers in states like Virginia, for example, have far outpaced their
procurement of renewable energy, according to a Greenpeace report. The same report goes
on to assert that in response to the 59% growth of Amazon data center’s in the last two
years, Virginia’s regional electricity company, Dominion, is seeking to invest $8 billion
to build the Atlantic Coast Pipeline which would transport fracked gas. Essentially,
Amazon’s energy demands might lead to the construction of costly fossil-fuel infrastructure
that will lead us deeper into climate change. To top it all off, Amazon offers AI technology,
among other services, to major Oil and Gas companies like BP to help them “identify
potential reservoirs faster and cheaper.” So in terms of web services, Amazon lags far
behind others in the field. And yet, in the face of it all, it still seeks to whitewash
its dirty image with lofty goals that they don’t even seem to be working toward and
have even gone so far as to silence employees critical of Amazon’s climate policies.
This silencing is typical of Amazon’s relationship with its employees. In fact, when we understand
the corporate culture and the inevitable social consequences that permeate out from it, Amazon’s
goals of creating ethical standards and achieving sustainability targets seem even further out
of reach. Because, at the center of Amazon’s empire, and indeed what has allowed it to
become such a far-reaching company, is a growth-at-any-cost mindset. A mindset that pushes those in the
corporate offices to work late into the night, sabotage fellow employees, and fulfill Jeff
Bezos’ dreams in a punishing environment. One Amazon employee claimed “Nearly every
person [he] worked with, [he] saw cry at their desk.” But this cutthroat corporate culture
isn’t contained to headquarters, it permeates many Amazon operations resulting in exploitative
labor practices for workers in Amazon Warehouses and delivery drivers, as well as tax evasion
by financial sleight of hand.
With the rapid growth of Amazon’s reach comes increased scrutiny of its operations.
Multitudes of exposés have revealed a worrying trend of constant injuries riddling Amazon
fulfillment centers. Because Amazon warehouses are all about speed, that two-day shipping
order often takes higher priority than the well-being of the workers scrambling to fulfil
it, especially during peak seasons like Prime Day or Black Friday. According to an investigative
report from Reveal, Amazon’s serious injury rate reached 9.6 per 100 full-time workers
in 2018. When compared to an industry average that year of 4, that number is unacceptably
high. Amazon’s employee abuse is exemplified by the story of Candice Dixon. Reveal states
that Dixon worked at Amazon as a “stower.” Every 11 seconds she had to grab items from
moving warehouse shelves, scan them, and then place them in the correct bin to hit her quota.
If she didn’t keep up that pace for hours on end she could lose her job. As a result
of this ruthless pace, which at all times was being monitored by managers via Amazon’s
proprietary app ADAPT, Dixon was forced to move at an unsafe pace, sometimes jumping
to high shelves or sacrificing the health of her back to haul heavy bags of pet food
from the bottom shelves. According to Reveal, after just two months of working at the Amazon
warehouse, Dixon suffered a back sprain, joint inflammation, and chronic pain, that according
to an Amazon doctor was 100% due to her job. Employees across Amazon’s fulfillment centers
have voiced similar complaints, like Kay Johnson: “My knees, my back, my hands, they’re
never gonna be the same anymore. All because of Amazon.” Each paints an ugly picture
of a company that treats its employees less as humans and more as easily replaceable parts
in a large, speed-hungry machine.
Another part of Amazon’s strategy of growth involves the expansion of their delivery services.
If they are able to control the last stretch of the shipping process, the logic goes, then
packages can reach customers at an even faster rate. But as Amazon replaces more secure driver
jobs at services like USPS with part-time contractors from programs like Amazon Flex,
they can get away with providing fewer and fewer benefits to their employees. While Amazon
does seem to be creating jobs, the caliber of those jobs in terms of stability and pay
can vary greatly. One Amazon Flex driver in the San Francisco Bay Area admits how hard
it can be to deliver for Amazon: “You barely make enough as it is, and then given the cost
of wear and tear on your vehicle, and just the low pay and everything, it’s hard to
make a living.” According to Business Insider, Amazon also outsources some of its employment
of delivery drivers through third-party courier companies they call “delivery service partners”
or DSPs. This means that while Amazon controls the routes, packages, and basically everything
else, the DSPs set wages, benefits, and insurance so theoretically the wage could fall well
below the often touted $15/hr Amazon minimum. This kind of corporate loophole is again mirrored
in Amazon’s tax history. In fact, it seems like exploiting tax loopholes is their bread
and butter. In 2017, Amazon paid $0 in federal taxes. In 2018, once again, it paid $0. And
now, for the 2019 fiscal year, Amazon is finally paying taxes! A whopping 1.2% of its income...
a percentage well below the already minuscule 21% average corporate tax rate. So, when it
comes to the Amazon model of growth and speed, yes, they are providing unprecedented convenience
to customers. But to reach that level of convenience they must sacrifice environmental health,
step on the backs of workers, and ultimately rob the American public through tax evasion.
When we look at corporate behemoths like Amazon, a cold truth comes to light. Companies this
large wreak havoc on the environment and their workers with impunity all in the name of growth,
and we swallow these bitter consequences because they give us sweeteners in the form of convenience
and job growth. Yes, we certainly should avoid shopping with Amazon if possible, but ultimately
it is not our fault that Amazon decided to embrace a business model that sacrifices workers
and environmental health in the name of growth and speed. To truly make sure that companies
like Amazon don't work employees to the bone and pollute the atmosphere into oblivion,
regulatory bodies need to act decisively. This means a global crackdown on tax havens
and loopholes, strong support of workers unions, and just climate policies that hold the health
of the world on equal footing with the money in corporate accounts.
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