How about them delivery trucks and waste cardboard boxes? Those data centers can also generate a lot of emissions. Amazon is throwing spare change at a massing problem they're involved in.
Delivery trucks: 100,000 trucks at $70k each = $7 billion investment over 5 years. [1]
Datacenters: 80% renewable energy by 2024, 100% by 2030 [2]
For boxes, I'd agree that there's a lot of room for improvement in reduction in cardboard use and packaging reuse.
Everyone should come to their own conclusions about whether companies are doing enough in each area. For delivery trucks in particular I'd call the investments happening there much more than "spare change".
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/19/20873947/amazon-electric-... [2] https://blog.aboutamazon.com/sustainability/reducing-carbon-...
I mean, their whole operation is optimized up the wazoo. Imagine the time saved, the carbon emissions saved when folks don’t have to drive to and back to get their stuff.
I’m kind of hooked on this grocery delivery stuff too now, so much time and headache and gas saved.
Not if the alternative is bikeable and walkable cities with decent public transport, though.
American cities are not (for the most part) bikeable and certainly not walkable. Literally everything is designed to be driven to in a car.
The decent public transport would help, but since it's been made a political issue it's not exactly as easy as just working within the constraints of the system.
How do you expect this would change Amazon's logistics and how favorable they are for consumers? For my part, at the very least, I'm still likely to get a lot of things delivered. Local stores are very rarely cheaper for anything non-immediate and delivery takes much less of my time than going to a store and back.
At a guess, Amazon's still better than this alternative for many scenarios. Maybe not ten times better, but still better.
I understand that this is an unusual personality trait. Still, I'm reluctant to give it up.
If I'm morally not allowed to buy stuff because its bad for the environment, then what incentive do I have to earn more than 40k/year? Do I exist just to pay taxes to the government to fund "more moral" causes than my own consumption?
I'd love to see something like a personal carbon quota, same for every person on a planet.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/andriacheng/2019/12/04/amid-rec...
Amazon is great and all, but instead can you rebuild all of America to be denser walkable cities, with a great public rail system?
Signed, Hacker News
My remark is only that if delivery is better for the environment than going shopping, then that is a sign of a badly planned city (in terms of climate impact). Well-optimized delivery will address a symptom but not the cause. The cause is cities built for cars.
Yes, the point is that they're investing in efforts to help deal with some of their own externalities. We shouldn't be shaming a company for having the self-awareness to do this to the tune of billions of dollars.
It's not fair to criticize the amount, either, because $2 billion goes a long way to getting technology companies off the ground. Throwing more money at the problem doesn't produce better outcomes at this stage of the R&D pipeline. $2 billion is a lot of money.
Another way to look at it might be that investing in those companies by yield solutions to them that address what you mentioned above.
That's my hope at least.