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Despite making pledges to cut down on plastic packaging, a new report<\/a> from the nonprofit conservation organization Oceana estimates that Amazon\u2019s plastic waste has continued to grow in the US. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The company created 208 million pounds of plastic waste from its packaging in the US in 2022 alone, which Oceana says is enough trash to circle Earth more than 200 times in the form of plastic air pillows. That\u2019s a nearly 10 percent jump from the amount of plastic waste it generated the year before, according to the report. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The US is a worrying outlier for Amazon, Oceana says. Globally, the e-commerce giant says<\/a> that it reduced its use of plastic packaging 11.6 percent in 2022 compared to the prior year. But the US is the company\u2019s biggest market, and Oceana argues it\u2019s where Amazon needs to make a lot more progress. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWhy are U.S. customers being left behind?\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWhy are U.S. customers being left behind?\u201d Matt Littlejohn, Oceana\u2019s senior vice president for strategic initiatives, said in an emailed press release<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n There\u2019s not much transparency on how much plastic waste Amazon pumps out from place to place. Its latest sustainability report<\/a>, which covers 2022, doesn\u2019t break the data down by country. It also doesn\u2019t report on all the plastic waste generated by orders fulfilled by third-party sellers. So Oceana relied on market data from firms Mordor Intelligence and Euromonitor to conduct its analysis, and then made adjustments based on public statements Amazon has made about new measures meant to reduce waste. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n In an email to The Verge<\/em>, Amazon vice president of mechatronics and sustainable packaging\u00a0Pat Lindner called Oceana\u2019s analysis a \u201cmisleading report with exaggerated and inaccurate information about our plastic packaging\u201d and pointed to the company\u2019s \u201cmulti-year effort to eliminate plastic delivery packaging from our\u00a0US automated fulfillment centers.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Plastic film bags used for packaging generally aren\u2019t accepted in curbside recycling programs. Because this type of plastic is trickier to rehash than bottles, consumers who want to steer it away from landfills and incinerators would need to take it to designated drop-off locations<\/a> in the US. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n