Hello Plastic-Free Family-

While Amazon continues to maintain its stance that customers cannot opt for plastic-free packaging on their site, we want to continue exploring ways to reduce the plastic distribution.

One major issue many of you who wrote in mentioned is the fact that Amazon’s list of recycling drop off locations is inaccurate. 

Where I live, for example, the closest location listed near my zip was more than 40 minutes away (2 hours in summer). When I got there, they said they don’t accept plastic film like the bubble packs or filler because there is no market for it and no one is recycling it. Has anyone had a similar experience?

Amazon links out to this group for plastic film locations: https://www.plasticfilmrecycling.org/recycling-bags-and-wraps/find-drop-off-location/

Are any of you using this resource and have you asked the facility where they are recycling to confirm it’s really being done? Our research suggests the plastic recycling halted at many locations in 2018 but these databases have not been updated to reflect that. It would be great to get some field data from you all to back that up. Film (like the Amazon smart paks) also falls into a category that often just couldn’t be recycled, period.

Perhaps we can work with local businesses or individuals to centralize collection and somehow get it efficiently back to nearby Amazon facilities to manage responsibly and repurpose. Our challenge continues to remain the lack of facilities that actually accept the plastic packaging, in spite of what Amazon’s website suggests. (That and we know we just don’t need all the oil-based plastic in the first place.)

I’m exploring options for this with Terracycle and some other organizations but wanted to ask you- would you drop the plastic off to a centralized location if you knew it could be shipped back to Amazon or another facility that would truly repurpose it?

Note that Amazon has not agreed to accept this waste back at this time.

Let us know what you think in comments below or email plastics@fondgroup.com.

Thanks and have a great day!

Nicole Delma