It’s Time Amazon Made Prime More Sustainable And Here’s How It Could Do Just That

How many boxes do Amazon
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customers really need delivered to their doorsteps in one year?

That is the question Amazon should be asking itself.

10? 20? 100? 500?

How many is too many? And how willing would people be to face the facts and own up to their Amazon addictions?

Would people be willing to pay to have Amazon stop sending them packages?

While that last question may seem far fetched, let your mind wander for a second.

Everyone talks about doing his or her part for the environment but few people actually put their money where their mouths are aside from casually separating their trash from their recyclables into different colored bins each and every week.

And therein also lies the opportunity.

Amazon, by way of Prime, has a chance to make a difference.

Amazon knows exactly how many packages every American receives every year.

So imagine if Amazon asked customers to pay an additional annual fee, say $10 or $20 per year, to create individualized package tote boards that sum up how many packages customers have received and are projected to receive for the balance of the year, along with, and here’s the kicker, a contractual commitment with said customers that it will not send packages in excess of what they were sent the prior year without the express written consent of their customers – i.e. their customers’ stated opt-in willingness to go over the threshold and say FU to the environment.

Does this idea sound crazy?

It sure as hell does but here is the thing – would you do it as a consumer? Would you be willing to pay for Amazon to hold you accountable and to track your progress?

Undoubtedly some people would. And gladly.

But the better question is why should Amazon do something like this?

There are three reasons:

1) This idea, henceforth dubbed, “Sustainable Prime,” would make for one hell of a famed Amazon press release, both internally and externally

2) Amazon could calculate the cost of Sustainable Prime in a way that assures overall sales volume growth while holding package delivery volume neutral to the year prior

3) Sustainable Prime would serve as an internal forcing mechanism for Amazon to figure out how to consolidate shipments into fewer boxes – after all, necessity is the mother of all invention

And the beauty of the whole idea is that it also could be purchased as an optional annual add-on that, oh, who knows, could possibly be priced at the same rate as a one-time delivery surcharge for any Amazon grocery order under $150.

See the irony?

Not to be glib but when one puts it that way, the math starts to make a ton of sense.

The negative externalities of America’s fetish with e-commerce are only growing by the minute.

The World Economic Forum recently estimated that urban last-mile delivery emissions are “on track to increase by over 30% by 2030 in the top 100 cities globally . . . and (that) these emissions could reach 25 million tons of CO2 emitted annually by 2030.”

Yet, despite all the doomsday prognostications, Americans still didn’t skip a beat when the cost of Prime increased from $119 to $139, as it did back in 2022. Because Americans need their two-day shipping guarantees and their round-the-clock access to music and video content on demand.

So if the real difference at play here is planet Earth versus James Bond, why wouldn’t or, better yet, why shouldn’t Amazon think about developing something along these lines?

Whether it’s Sustainable Prime or something else entirely, Amazon, with over 100 million Prime members, many of whom fork over their money on repeat every year without the slightest hesitation, has the mechanism and the creativity to devise something that does matter and that yokes Amazon in solidarity with the world to curb the addiction that Amazon, itself, has created.

As an Amazon customer, it is hard to think of another Prime feature as valuable in the long-run.

Which is why Amazon could and should be doing more than it is.