If all the company’s plastic from 2021 were converted into plastic air pillows — the inflated pouches inserted in some Amazon packages to reduce shifting during transit — and laid side by side, Miller said it would circle the globe more than 800 times.

This is ridiculous and shouldn’t be happening.

Here’s an idea: bring back the old-school milk man delivery format. Nearly every day an Amazon truck cruises down my street. Amazon should provide households with a reusable bin (bonus: made of their own recycled single-use plastic) similar to the ones I’d unload off of the weekly delivery truck when I worked at CVS as a teenager:

A blue plastic reusable bin with top folding doors

Amazon drivers would deliver goods in these bins, and collect the empty bins from the curb or doorstop or whatever. Just like the milk man.

It’s a tragedy that this isn’t more of a priority. This is the type of problem Amazon should be unleashing scores of designers on. Ruined By Design by Mike Monteiro comes to mind here. It’s a solvable (or at least drastically reducible) problem, and I’d love to see this change.