What’s Inside Amazon’s 2024 Sustainability Report?
It is estimated that Amazon ships more than 1,000 packages per minute around the world.
With a workforce of more than 1.5 million and subsidiaries across industries, the sheer scale of Amazon means it could have a significant impact on global sustainability goals.
While Amazon’s 2024 Sustainability Report shows a rise in absolute emissions, it also shows the efforts it is making across ESG to reduce its negative impact.
“Looking ahead, we recognise that the path to being a more sustainable company will never be linear, because we’re charting new territory at an unprecedented scale,” says Kara Hurst, Chief Sustainability Officer at Amazon, in the report.
“While we are firm on our goals, our approach will continuously evolve with emerging challenges and opportunities, as we’re seeing with the rapid adoption of AI.
“No matter what we’re faced with in the future, we’ll remain steadfast in our commitment to sustainability and will continue to invest, innovate and obsess over our progress each year, with the same intensity and focus that has defined Amazon from Day One.”
Amazon’s carbon and energy in 2024
Amazon aims to reach net zero carbon emissions across its global operations by 2040, but has faced a rise in emissions from 2023 from 64.38 MTCO₂e to 68.25 MTCO₂e.
However, its grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per dollar of gross merchandise sales decreased from 75.6g CO₂3/$GMS to 72.6g CO₂e/$GMS.
In 2023 the company reached its goal of matching 100% of electricity consumed by its global operations with renewable energy, which it continued in 2024.
By 2030, Amazon aims to have at least 100,000 electric delivery vans on the road and 2024 saw a rise from more than 19,000 to more than 31,000.
It met its goal of deploying 10,000 EVs in India by 2025 and has matched 100% of energy used by all active Echo, Fire TV and Ring devices worldwide with operational wind and solar capacity.
Through The Climate Pledge, co-founded by Amazon in 2019, the company hopes to inspire and empower others to join the company’s goal of reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2040.
In 2024, the number of signatories to the Pledge rose to 549.
Sally Fouts, Director of The Climate Pledge at Amazon, said on LinkedIn: “As a co-founder and signatory of The Climate Pledge, Amazon has helped build a framework for collective action and accountability.
“Reporting like this is a reminder that progress isn’t always linear—but it is essential. When businesses measure and report openly, they create clarity, trust and momentum for others to follow.”
AWS (Amazon Web Services) data centres achieved global power usage effectiveness of 1.15 compared to the industry average of 1.25.
Waste and circularity at Amazon
Amazon’s physical operations saw efforts to reduce waste and packaging.
In 2024, the business eliminated all plastic air pillows globally, substituting recyclable paper fillers.
This contributed to a 16.4% reduction in single-use plastic delivery packaging globally.
Amazon also achieved an 85% landfill diversion rate, up from 84% in 2023 and 82% in 2022.
Across the US and Europe, Amazon aims to reduce food waste by 50% by 2030 and donated the equivalent of 81 million meals in 2024.
Water is another focus area for the business with a new goal set in 2024 to return more water to communities in India than it uses in all direct operations by 2027.
In AWS, the company aims to be water positive by 2030 and has made 53% progress toward meeting this goal.
Amazon’s community impact
More than 21,000 affordable homes have been created or preserved through US$2.2bn of investment by Amazon, with the aim of increasing this to US$3.6bn for more than 35,000 homes.
AWS cloud computing credits have been distributed to support organisations promoting global health, meeting the company’s goal of US$60m in credits.
Free cloud computing skills training has been taken on by 31 million people and free AI skills training by more than two million people.
In underserved communities worldwide, more than 7.8 million students were reached by Amazon Future Engineer programmes.
