Amazon: please stop using un-necessary plastic packaging

Amazon describes itself as the world's largest online retailer, and any small changes it makes could have a substantial impact, for better or worse, on a significant scale.

Although Amazon's packaging has long had a tendency to be wasteful, recently matters have become even worse when the company switched from using cardboard sleeves and packets that could be recycled relatively easily to using plastic envelopes and packets that are mostly impossible to recycle.

These are harmful to our natural environment in many ways: first, the manufacture of plastic packaging causes toxic micro-plastics to be released into the environment, especially waterways where they can end up poisoning marine life and thus the entire food chain. Next, after use, in the rare cases where the end consumer is able to get the plastic packaging to the appropriate recycling facility, more micro-plastics are released into the environment by the recycling process. Failing that, the packaging ends up in landfill where it will take centuries to break down, or worse still, dumped in developing countries or in the growing toxic monstrosity of plastic choking our oceans.

Amazon should listen to the desires of its customers and behave with responsibility towards current and future generations. By choosing packaging without plastic that can be recycled relatively easily, Amazon could make a meaningful difference while setting an excellent example for other online retailers. If Amazon continues to show such disregard for our natural environment, it will continue to do untold harm.