Environmental protesters in Seattle seized on Amazon’s annual Prime Day sales event on Tuesday to once again call out the tech giant’s efforts around sustainability.
Groups including Stand.earth and Pacific Environment said in a news release that a protest outside Amazon’s headquarters towers in the Denny Regrade area would include a street “mural” and a 1,200-square-foot banner with the message: “Amazon is going the wrong way on climate.”
Posts on X showed the message stenciled on 6th Avenue and crowds gathered in the street near the Spheres.
Last year, Stand took credit for a similar large and public message to Amazon and CEO Andy Jassy painted across two lanes of 6th Avenue that read: “AMAZON: PRIME POLLUTER. #DELIVER CHANGE.”
The protest Tuesday comes a week after Amazon released its latest sustainability report in which it touted its clean energy accomplishments and said its carbon footprint shrank by 3% last year.
Stand, which targets Amazon for its delivery related emissions, said Amazon’s report found the company’s Scope 1 emissions, which includes transportation, grew 7% year-over-year to 14.27 million metric tons CO2e. And the group said that since announcing its Climate Pledge in 2019 — to be net-zero carbon by 2040 — Amazon has expanded its Scope 1 emissions at a compound annual growth rate of 25.5%.
The group Amazon Employees for Climate Justice also called out the tech giant last week and said Amazon was “distorting the truth” with its claim that it met its goal of achieving 100% renewable energy seven years early.
Stand said Tuesday it would attempt to deliver a letter to Jassy outlining steps the company needs to take “to correct course and align with the latest science on climate change.”
Update: Amazon spokesperson Steve Kelly provided the following statement to GeekWire via email:
“The groups protesting today are wrong about the facts and our sustainability efforts, and lack a basic understanding of our operations generally. The fact is, there are few companies that are making the progress we are to become more sustainable — which is keeping us on track to be net-zero carbon across all of our operations by 2040. Just last week, we announced that we now have more than 24,000 electric delivery vans on the road around the world, that we reached our goal of 100% renewable energy seven years early, and that we’ve removed 95% of plastic air pillows from our delivery packaging in North America — which means nearly all or our customer deliveries for Prime Day won’t contain plastic air pillows. We’ll continue to invent and build advanced systems, tools, and solutions to drive our net-zero path forward, and deliver for our customers, partners, and the planet.”
The two-day Prime Day event is expected to drive record-setting online sales this week in the U.S.
Jassy posted a link to an Amazon live blog promoting some of the company’s “millions of amazing deals” for Prime members.
