Amazon plans to cut waste in response to damning disposal footage
Amazon has responded to the damning ITV footage of it disposing of millions of perfectly good items by launching two new recycling programs.
The new policy comes as part of a new effort to give its unsold products a second life when they are returned to its warehouses.
The program comes after a damning report by ITV where it showed the ecommerce giant disposing of millions of perfectly usable unsold items at one of its UK warehouses.
The items included hairdryers, laptops, TV’s and drones which were loaded into trucks and taken to waste centres.
The first program, named “FBA Grade and Resell”, will let its third-party businesses on its marketplace resell previously returned items as “used” items.
The goods will be automatically returned to Amazon for internal evaluation before being determined whether it is “Used – Like New, Used – Very Good, Used – Good, or Used – Acceptable.”
Marketplace sellers are then able to list the item for a price based on the product’s condition.
The recycling policy has been launched in the UK and Amazon has promised to expand it to the US by the end of this year.
FBA Grade and Resell will be rolled out in Germany, France, Italy and Spain by early 2022.
Amazon will also introduce “FBA Liquidations” which will allow sellers to use Amazon’s “wholesale resale channel and technology” to recover a some of their cost of inventory from the returned items.
The program is live in the US, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, and will launch in the UK this month.
“Customer returns are a fact of life for all retailers, and what to do with those products is an industry-wide challenge,” Amazon director Libby Johnson McKee said in a statement.
“These new programs are examples of the steps we’re taking to ensure that products sold on Amazon, whether by us or our small business partners, go to good use and don’t become waste.
“We hope these help build a circular economy and reduce our impact on the planet. And we’re excited that these program will also help the businesses selling on Amazon reduce costs and grow their businesses.”
From: chargedretail