Amazon’s new resource helps sellers with their product and packaging sustainability goals
Today at Accelerate, Amazon announced The Sustainability Solutions Hub, a new resource in Seller Central to help sellers with their product and packaging sustainability efforts. The Sustainability Solutions Hub provides all the information sellers need to get started with Amazon’s sustainability programs in one easy to use location—this includes programs like Climate Pledge Friendly, Amazon Renewed, and Ships in Product Packaging. The Hub will be available to all sellers in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, and U.S. by the end of October.
As part of the Hub, Amazon will launch a new dashboard where sellers can receive personalized, relevant data and information to track their progress with Amazon’s sustainability programs, such as the percentage of revenue from Climate Pledge Friendly products. This dashboard will also identify opportunities for sellers to take advantage of the programs offered.
Sellers will also find a new sustainability category in the Service Provider Network that features a carefully curated set of service providers to help them with packaging design and testing, along with product design and certification.
A Closer Look at Ships in Product Packaging and Climate Pledge Friendly
Ships in Product Packaging
Since 2015, Amazon’s sustainable packaging programs have avoided more than 2 million tons of packaging materials, the equivalent weight of more than 230 Space Needles. A big part of this effort is the Ships in Product Packaging program, formerly known as Ship in Own Container. This program allows Amazon to work with sellers to help redesign their packaging to enable their products to ship in their own branded product packaging without any Amazon-added delivery packaging. In 2022, Amazon shipped 11% of its items globally without added Amazon packaging. In 2024 the program will be available to all sellers who use Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA).
Seller benefits of this program include:
- Connecting with customers. Customers will immediately see seller branding upon delivery, and that sellers are providing them with an easy-to-open packaging experience that creates less waste.
- Cost reduction. Products certified to ship in their own packaging can be eligible for lower FBA fulfillment fees. Additionally, sellers may be able to save on the cost of the packaging itself. Retail packaging tends to be oversized and glossy to capture customer attention. Designing packaging for e-commerce, where the customer is able to see images of the product online, allows for simpler and often lower cost packaging.
- Environmental benefits. By using more compact packaging, sellers can potentially reduce transportation costs and carbon emissions by using less packaging material and taking up less space on trucks, which means fewer trips.
Once the Ships in Product Packaging program is launched for all sellers who use FBA, the dashboard in the Sustainability Solutions Hub will include Ships in Product Packaging information, sharing data such as estimated package weight avoided for certified products and the packaging weight avoidance opportunity for products not yet certified.
Climate Pledge Friendly
The Climate Pledge Friendly program launched in 2020 to help customers discover more-sustainable products at scale and reward sellers for developing innovative products.
Once in the program, products go into the Climate Pledge Friendly storefront in addition to receiving the Climate Pledge Friendly badge. In order to qualify, a product needs to have at least one of the qualifying certifications. Amazon partners with more than 50 credible and recognized sustainability certifiers, including Forest Stewardship Council, FairTrade, Environmental Working Group, and Rainforest Alliance.
These certifications allow customers to trust that the Climate Pledge Friendly badge means they’re purchasing a more-sustainable product—that’s why the badge is discoverable at every stage of the customer shopping journey including Search, Product Detail Pages, Advertising, Product Recommendations, and via Amazon Business. More than 60 million customers have switched to more sustainable product options in the program and sellers have found that adding the badge to a product increases page views by an average of 10%.
The number of Climate Pledge Friendly certifications continues to grow as Amazon listens to feedback from sellers on the sustainable investments and innovations they’re working on. For example, Amazon has partnered with sustainability experts and added three new certifications to qualify:
- SCS Recycled Content Standard, a third-party certification recognizing electronics with high utilization of recycled content;
- International Sustainability & Carbon Certification Plus, a third-party certification that recognizes bio-based materials and proof that a product can be renewed or regenerated rather than disposed of;
- Plant-Based Fiber Blended, an Amazon developed certification recognizing more-sustainable plant-based materials in textiles.
The Sustainability Solutions Hub will provide sellers trainings about Climate Pledge Friendly certifications. Sellers can use the Certification Recommendation Tool for a shortlist of relevant certifications to explore, in addition to receiving direct access to a curated set of third-party service providers to help sellers get started with certification. The dashboard will identify potential opportunities where sellers can further engage by suggesting which products are likely to be eligible for the program.
Amazon is committed to supporting seller sustainability efforts, helping sellers grow their businesses, and innovating with them to bring more sustainable products and solutions to customers everywhere.