Amazon has joined The Bottle Consortium, an environmental initiative under the U.S. Department of Energy, to focus on “reducing plastic pollution through innovation in materials and recycling.”
The consortium was launched in October 2020 to spur innovation and advance new technologies, addressing plastic pollution by bringing together “cutting edge talent and capabilities from both the public and private sectors.”
Bottle stands for “Bio-Optimized Technologies to keep Thermoplastics out of Landfills and the Environment.”
The ecommerce giant has joined the consortium to help further its progress in developing chemical upcycling.
Amazon’s team of materials scientists and experts will develop technologies to enable the full life cycle of plastics to be net-zero carbon.
The company described the collaboration as a way of “handling today’s plastics and ensuring tomorrow’s plastics are recyclable by design.”
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Amazon claims this research is another step in its efforts to eliminate or reduce plastic waste.
As of 2021, the company has reduced the outbound weight of packaging per shipment by 36%, a total of one million tonnes, while increasing the use of recyclable materials.
“In partnership with BOTTLE, we plan to make significant progress in developing new technologies and materials that will lead to less material in landfills and more back into the circular economy,” said Amazon principal materials scientist Alan Jacobsen.
“Science and innovation are at the heart of our sustainability work at Amazon, and we’re committed to using our size and scale to reduce and eliminate our use of materials and find new ones that can be applied to our operations and other industries around the world.”
Bottle chief executive Gregg Beckham added: “Finding a way to better recycle single-use plastics while reducing and ultimately eliminating their use is a grand challenge of our time, and we’re committed to pursuing scientific advancement to this end.
“With Amazon’s innovation expertise, we’re excited to work together to find solutions that have the potential to have vast, positive impacts.”
