Amazon

In February 2020, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledged to give $10 billion of his own money to scientists and activists working to fix the climate crisis. It was such a grand gesture that you’d perhaps never have guessed that Amazon’s environmental track record is profoundly shitty overall or that Bezos had just been aggressively courting oil and gas industry customers. 

A few months prior to his sudden burst of philanthropy, Amazon employees successfully pressured Bezos into releasing the company’s first-ever sustainability report. That report revealed that in 2018, Amazon had emitted 44.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, which is roughly equivalent to the annual emissions of Norway. (Bezos has since stepped down as CEO of Amazon, but still serves as chairman, a position above CEO.) 

In 2021 (the same year Bezos briefly launched himself into space) and 2022, the CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) gave Amazon a big ol’ F for the information it submitted. In early 2022, Amazon got another big ol’ F from As You Sow, a corporate accountability watchdog that looked into whether or not Amazon is tracking to its goal of carbon neutrality by 2040. 

The report said that in addition to failing to fully report its emissions, Amazon has continued to dramatically increase its absolute emissions every year since 2018. Of course, Amazon’s emissions are, in part, a reflection of the consumerism of society at large as well as a recent run of pandemic-fueled purchasing, and yet, other big retailers like Target and Walmart are doing at least a somewhat better job than Amazon on environmental reporting, goal setting, and emissions reductions. 

There’s also the ugly little fact that, in the 2022 election cycle alone, Amazon’s political action committee gave $322,000 to the politicians with the worst environmental track records in Congress. (That’s more than Exxon gave to the same cohort.) So, if you shop at Amazon or Whole Foods, have a Kindle or Alexa, or use Audible, Goodreads, or Ring, there’s a chance your money could end up in the campaign coffers of politicians with the worst environmental track records in Congress. 

Another ugly little fact: Amazon still sells RoundUp and other products with a pesticide called glyphosate in it, a chemical that creates cancer precursors in humans. Use of glyphosate has been banned or restricted in over 15 countries and half of U.S. states. 

Finally, Amazon maintains relationships with the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable, two industry groups with a long history of lobbying against climate-protecting policies. 

While Bezos’ personal climate philanthropy is admirable, it can’t wash away Amazon’s absolutely disgraceful environmental performance on the whole. As the group Amazon Employees for Climate Justice put it, “one hand cannot give what the other is taking away.”