HMG-LCCN OP/ED: AMAZON PRIMED TO DAMAGE THE ENVIRONMENT

Whatever happened to corporate responsibility?

We have seen it happen in San Francisco; Google, Apple and other tech companies have gentrified the city, causing rent and housing to skyrocket.

I saw it firsthand, my daughter attended the University of San Francisco from 2013 to 2017, with Google and Apple taking over the city, bussing employees for free 1.5 hours away. 

A two-bedroom apartment in 2016 cost $2,700, when she graduated, that landlord raised the rent to $3,700.

We have seen it here in So Cal, where Snapchat moved into Venice years ago, and now the iconic city is under gentrification similar to San Francisco.

Now the latest in the height of corporate irresponsibility is Amazon, who has moved from cardboard shipping containers to plastic containers.

A company that earns billions in profits makes the excuse that “they need to get more packages into delivery trucks and planes, therefore we are moving to plastic.”

And of course their massive public relations machine finds a person that says it is cheaper to produce the plastic containers than it is cardboard.

But there is nothing that massive machine can say about the recycling problems these plastic containers cause.

Most recycled waste is sold to China, but it must be “pure” with no plastic or plastic containers inside.

Just like plastic bags, people throw Amazon containers into their recyclables which must be hand-picked out of the waste before it goes into the recycling machine.

Bottom line: Amazon has killed the bottom line of recycling companies by switching to plastic. (Maybe Bezos is planning on buying all recycling companies.)

Another problem is that Amazon, once again eschewing corporate responsibility, puts a paper label on their new plastic containers. 

The label renders the packages unfit to be recycled; let’s see that P/R machine spin that.

Some countries hit companies that are Amazon Irresponsible with fees based on how much waste their products and packages contribute. 

Good idea, charge enough so Amazon goes back to cardboard.

Amazon already pays these fees in countries such as Canada, but of course not in the United States, where it has a phalanx of lobbyists fighting to prevent the fees from being imposed.

It is not a coincidence that Amazon is one of the few fortune 500 companies NOT to file a corporate social responsibility or sustainability report.

According to Investopedia, “Corporate social responsibility is a self-regulating business model that helps a company be socially accountable — to itself, its stakeholders, and the public. By practicing corporate social responsibility, also called corporate citizenship, companies can be conscious of the kind of impact they are having on all aspects of society including economic, social, and environmental.”

“To engage in CSR means that, in the normal course of business, a company is operating in ways that enhance society and the environment, instead of contributing negatively to them.”

Send Amazon a message and buy from other companies who put the environment over corporate profits.

It is the responsible thing to do.

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