Speaker 1: On a recent afternoon here in our newsroom in San Francisco, Sarah,
Speaker 1: can I ambush you for two seconds? I walked around
Speaker 1: with a mic and I asked everyone about their online
Speaker 1: shopping habits. I was wondering, if you buy things online?
Speaker 1: I do. I buy most of my stuff online these days. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: we just recently started using Amazon Prime for all of
Speaker 1: our grocery deliveries. It's so much easier considering we have
Speaker 1: a baby at home and can rarely leave the house. Specifically,
Speaker 1: I was curious if people have thought about the carbon
Speaker 1: emissions from all their deliveries. Have you ever worried about
Speaker 1: like the environmental impact we do? Actually? Yeah, there was.
Speaker 1: There was an interesting discussion in our neighborhoods next door
Speaker 1: and if they felt guilty about it? Yeah? What do you?
Speaker 1: What do you think? What do you do about that concern? Um? Um,
Speaker 1: I planted tree every time. I'm just joking. How how
Speaker 1: many deliveries would you estimate you get a week? Or
Speaker 1: mom three to five a week? Oh, that's quite a bit.
Speaker 1: We get a lot. Yeah, my wife probably does more. Actually,
Speaker 1: my wife definitely does more shopping than I do. But
Speaker 1: but I do a little bit and have you guys
Speaker 1: worried about the carbon emissions of all this? Yeah, totally, totally.
Speaker 1: We worry about it a lot, but not enough to
Speaker 1: like stop just like we're total hypocrites. Total hypocrites. That
Speaker 1: you just heard is our executive editor, Tom Giles, and
Speaker 1: I think the sentiment he expressed is familiar to a
Speaker 1: lot of us. Amazon makes billions of shipments a year
Speaker 1: involving planes and ships, trucks and cars that emit a
Speaker 1: lot of carbon dioxide. Today in the show, we're taking
Speaker 1: you inside a group of Amazon employees who, unlike me
Speaker 1: and Tom, actually did something about their concern. Abandoned together
Speaker 1: and they try to publicly pressure their employer to do
Speaker 1: more to fight climate change. And with the help of
Speaker 1: a professor who studied this very issue, we'll less to
Speaker 1: see if getting everything delivered to us could eventually, with
Speaker 1: the right decisions, become a good thing for the environment.
Speaker 1: I'm Akio. You're listening to Decrypted stay with us, So, Spencer,
Speaker 1: can you introduce yourself. I'm Spencer Soaper and I'm a
Speaker 1: technology reporter with Bloomberg. You know, Spencer, you've been covering
Speaker 1: Amazon for many years now. When did this issue of
Speaker 1: the environment start popping up in your reporting. Amazon's environmental
Speaker 1: impact has been an issue since I started here covering Amazon.
Speaker 1: It's environmental effects have always been top of mind because
Speaker 1: everyone gets packages from Amazon and sometimes they come in
Speaker 1: very big boxes, and there have always been concerns about waste.
Speaker 1: This issue, whether it's waste or the carbon emissions, has
Speaker 1: it been a long standing concern for the people who
Speaker 1: work at Amazon. Yes, so people who work at Amazon
Speaker 1: have been worried about this for for a number of years,
Speaker 1: and it seems like it's been an issue that's kind
Speaker 1: of come up here and there, and so people have
Speaker 1: done things like right six page papers on Amazon's environmental impacts,
Speaker 1: hoping to get the company to do a little more,
Speaker 1: or they've presented ideas at these think Big events where
Speaker 1: Amazon tries to get employees to share their big ideas
Speaker 1: things that can guide their business into the future, and
Speaker 1: nothing really accomplished anything. So in two thousand eighteen, a
Speaker 1: group of employees started looking at it more seriously, and
Speaker 1: a galvanizing moment at that time was when they started
Speaker 1: looking at what other companies were doing, companies like DHL
Speaker 1: or Google, and they learned that Amazon was falling pretty
Speaker 1: far shy of its competitors in terms of being proactive
Speaker 1: about its environmental impacts. So that coalesced in the employees
Speaker 1: getting together to file a shareholder resolution. For our listeners
Speaker 1: who don't know, what is the shareholder resolution? So Amazon
Speaker 1: employees also are shareholders, and shareholder resolution is a process
Speaker 1: by which anyone who owns shares of a company can
Speaker 1: present an idea to officially be voted on by other
Speaker 1: shareholders to basically send a message to the company what's
Speaker 1: important to the people who own the company. We should
Speaker 1: note that a shareholder resolution is non binding. Right, It's
Speaker 1: basically kind of a way to shame a company's executives.
Speaker 1: I guess it's a way to apply public pressure. Yes,
Speaker 1: definitely a way to apply public pressure and call attention
Speaker 1: to an issue. Seeing it on other things like gender diversity,
Speaker 1: the and and racial diversity, those sorts of things. What
Speaker 1: did this particular resolution call for? It was pretty broad,
Speaker 1: but it basically called on Amazon to create a comprehensive
Speaker 1: plan to take more steps to address climate change and
Speaker 1: to reduce its effects on climate change. Okay, so a
Speaker 1: group of Amazon employees decided to very publicly call for
Speaker 1: Amazon to do more to fight climate change. What happens next?
Speaker 1: So a shareholder resolution coming from Amazon employees is extremely rare.
Speaker 1: They tend to keep problems within the family and don't
Speaker 1: discuss them publicly. And then afterward, Emily Cunningham, who is
Speaker 1: promoting this effort employee effort within Amazon, sent an email
Speaker 1: to her colleagues trying to explain herself like, this is
Speaker 1: why climate change is important to me, and this is
Speaker 1: why I felt it was important to present this resolution,
Speaker 1: and she asked any colleagues who felt similarly to to
Speaker 1: join her and signing the resolution. And one of her
Speaker 1: colleagues who got that email was Marin Costa. My name
Speaker 1: is Marin Costa and my title is Principal User Experience Designer.
Speaker 1: So Marin is a UX designer who has been working
Speaker 1: at Amazon for several years. She's a mother, and she's
Speaker 1: concerned about the environment, especially Amazon's impact on the environment,
Speaker 1: and it's something that she's felt personally conflicted about herself.
Speaker 1: So when the email arrived in her inbox, this was
Speaker 1: an issue she immediately wanted to get involved with. And
Speaker 1: I wrote back immediately and just said, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is amazing. I've been sitting here by myself feeling
Speaker 1: frustrated and futile, so I immediately signed. So they filed
Speaker 1: the shareholder resolution in December, and it immediately got the
Speaker 1: attention of Amazon senior management. And in January, the employees
Speaker 1: meet with Amazon senior leadership. We asked them to release
Speaker 1: data about our carbon footprint. We asked them for a
Speaker 1: date on when we would be carbon renewable energy, and
Speaker 1: they refused to give both. But they did agree in
Speaker 1: that initial meeting not to challenge are resolution and allow
Speaker 1: it to go on the ballot for a vote. Online
Speaker 1: retail giant Amazon plans to make half of its shipments
Speaker 1: carbon neutral by and then in February, Amazon announced Amazon
Speaker 1: Shipment Zero, which is this pledge to reduce carbon emissions
Speaker 1: with a goal of reducing them by by. Amazon employees
Speaker 1: thought this was obviously an effort to try to appease
Speaker 1: appease them and recognize concerns about Amazon's carbon footprint. What's
Speaker 1: kind of the group's reaction to Project zero? More sweeping
Speaker 1: the floors while the house is burning, down a bucket
Speaker 1: of water on a forest fire, you know, rearranging Digerison Titanic,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to say, It's not enough, we need
Speaker 1: a date. We're still behind. We're still away behind. So
Speaker 1: shortly after that announcement, the Amazon employees are once again
Speaker 1: called into a meeting with Amazon leadership and they were
Speaker 1: asked if they'd be willing to withdraw their proposal since
Speaker 1: Amazon was now moving in their direction of addressing climate change.
Speaker 1: So we said we wouldn't withdraw unless we could get
Speaker 1: a date. We still didn't have a date by when
Speaker 1: we would be renewable. That's something that was important to
Speaker 1: employees was just like, okay, let's just pose this question
Speaker 1: and force a vote on it. So that said, everyone
Speaker 1: has to go on record on on where they stand.
Speaker 1: So Amazon has its annual shareholder meeting in May. It
Speaker 1: does it in Seattle, and there's always a smorgas board
Speaker 1: of protesters. They're airing grievances about Amazon. The big edition
Speaker 1: this year were the employee Climate Change A protesters, And
Speaker 1: so you had this large contingent of Amazon employees. Um
Speaker 1: they were dressed in white T shirts to show solidarity.
Speaker 1: They had signs and things calling for Amazon to dress
Speaker 1: climate change. And a big difference was because many of
Speaker 1: these Amazon employees are actual shareholders, is that these protesters
Speaker 1: got into the room. This meeting, Emily Cunningham will now
Speaker 1: introduce a shareholder proposal over costing a report from Climate
Speaker 1: Change Times. One of the employees stood up Emily Cunningham
Speaker 1: and she actually, like it was kind of dramatic moment,
Speaker 1: actually called uh for Jeff Bezos to come out and
Speaker 1: hear her speak before I started my time. I liked
Speaker 1: for Jeff Bezos to come out on stage so that
Speaker 1: I can kids directly. He did not. He was still
Speaker 1: in the in the back. He comes out and gives
Speaker 1: like a presentation, but he's not there for the entire
Speaker 1: shareholder meeting. Well, he began hearing this speech. I assume
Speaker 1: so and memory I've worked at Amazon the last and
Speaker 1: she basically laid out the employee's concerns and why they
Speaker 1: were proposing this this petition. Emily asked the Amazon employees
Speaker 1: that were there to stand up, but also many other people,
Speaker 1: just non employees, just shareholders stood up in support. Some
Speaker 1: people were even crying, you know, it was it was
Speaker 1: really it was a really powerful moment. So the shareholder
Speaker 1: proposal went down. It gained about support from Amazon shareholders,
Speaker 1: which wasn't sufficient, but it was still a pretty big number.
Speaker 1: And it really encouraged the employees that they were able
Speaker 1: to reach such a high water mark in terms of support.
Speaker 1: Does want to three? So after the vote, the meeting
Speaker 1: room clears out and the employ he's basically you know,
Speaker 1: grouped together standing beneath one of their banners, and they
Speaker 1: spoke to the to the media. Without bold, rapid action,
Speaker 1: we will lose our only chance to avoid catastrophic warming.
Speaker 1: There's no issue more important to our customers or our
Speaker 1: world than the climate crisis, and we are falling far short.
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezels. Can you see children who might have drowned,
Speaker 1: towns thriving that might have burned, species swimming that might
Speaker 1: have been lost forever? How will we tell our children?
Speaker 1: Do you feel like Marin and her group were able
Speaker 1: to accomplish something that people before weren't able to accomplish? Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean they were able to demonstrate that there's a
Speaker 1: significant movement within the company that a lot of people
Speaker 1: are are uncomfortable. We have a tight labor market. A
Speaker 1: lot of these jobs are extremely hard for companies like
Speaker 1: Amazon to find people for and higher than for. And
Speaker 1: so if people feel like there are other companies where
Speaker 1: they can work and feel more comfortable about their place
Speaker 1: in society. If that company is doing more to protect
Speaker 1: the environment, they can very easily jump ship and go
Speaker 1: to those jobs. So this is something that Amazon has
Speaker 1: consider from a an employee retention standpoint, which is which
Speaker 1: is extremely important for for the tech industry. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back, Okay, So before the break, we heard about
Speaker 1: a group of Amazon employees who are pressuring their company
Speaker 1: into doing better for the planet. And I guess that
Speaker 1: begs the question how bad is Amazon? Because the alternative
Speaker 1: to Amazon and to e commerce more broadly, is all
Speaker 1: of us driving individually to the store, and that's also
Speaker 1: bad for the planet. And to answer that question, Spencer,
Speaker 1: you talked to an expert. Yes, I met with Anne
Speaker 1: good Child. She's a professor at the University of Washington
Speaker 1: UH in Amazon's hometown of Seattle. So that's the last
Speaker 1: thing what I'm on. Mm hm, So I think cat
Speaker 1: callers cat call Yeah, so we have these two cats. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The callers call from Ontario. And it's interesting because this
Speaker 1: project for her began as a question that probably a
Speaker 1: lot of other people have asked themselves. I think we
Speaker 1: started in it was actually a couple of studies, A
Speaker 1: grad student and I were both using grocery delivery services
Speaker 1: and just had a personal interest in trying to understand
Speaker 1: what that meant for transport to an emissions. It started
Speaker 1: from her guilty conscience, like the rest of us. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: the guilty conscious and a question. And the question was
Speaker 1: a good one because theoretically shopping on Amazon could be
Speaker 1: a good thing. If you live on a cul de
Speaker 1: sac with twenty homes, and all of those people go
Speaker 1: to the supermarket once a week, maybe they go to
Speaker 1: Costco twice a month, and you you add up all
Speaker 1: of those vehicle trips. If you could replace all of
Speaker 1: those vehicle trips with one weekly truck trip through the
Speaker 1: neighborhood to all of those homes delivering all of those things,
Speaker 1: then you're actually burning less fossil fuel. Then that's a
Speaker 1: that's a more efficient way to get the products to
Speaker 1: those people. Our existing model is not very efficient an
Speaker 1: energy or traffic standpoint. If if that basic model is
Speaker 1: you get in the car, you drive to the store,
Speaker 1: and you drive home again, that's not hard to beat. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: get in your car, drive the person you store, drive home,
Speaker 1: realize you forgot something to drive back, drive home. Yes,
Speaker 1: especially Yeah, I was going to make fun of my husband,
Speaker 1: but I shouldn't do that. Go ahead ahead. So there
Speaker 1: is a possibility that by utilizing e commerce more, you're
Speaker 1: actually helping the planet. That's the theory. In practice, the
Speaker 1: exact opposite happens. So there's many things that erode the
Speaker 1: benefits of that sort of idealized delivery service concept. One
Speaker 1: of those is that you have multiple players. So if
Speaker 1: we have three or four companies doing a similar thing,
Speaker 1: so you have four different trucks in your neighborhood instead
Speaker 1: of potentially one. Another one is this idea of really
Speaker 1: fast delivery times. So if you're delivering and you do
Speaker 1: it once a week versus if you do it every day,
Speaker 1: you can squish more stuff into a bigger truck and
Speaker 1: have a lower cost and lower carbon oxide footprint. So
Speaker 1: that pressure to deliver more quickly is also eroding the
Speaker 1: potential benefits. And and we're talking about just carbon emissions
Speaker 1: from the transportation right. It doesn't include things like packaging. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're not even talking about packaging now. We're simply talking
Speaker 1: about the consumption of fossil fuels. So the way we're
Speaker 1: moving suggests that we're actually not you know, capturing those
Speaker 1: consolidation benefits of a delivery service. And I'm sure that
Speaker 1: right now we have increased travel demand through online chopping
Speaker 1: and delivery services. Alright, So what's the bottom line if
Speaker 1: you were to think of right now? Is it all
Speaker 1: of these companies that are bringing stuff to you versus
Speaker 1: you go into the store. Is it better for the environment,
Speaker 1: worse for the environment, or a wash? It's worse for
Speaker 1: the environment. For Yeah, sus to remember how I went
Speaker 1: around our office and made everyone feel bad about their
Speaker 1: online shopping. Yeah, they all loved you for that, you know,
Speaker 1: given what and told us it sounds like we should
Speaker 1: indeed feel bad about it, that the nagging guilt we
Speaker 1: feel is actually warranted. Yeah, it's warranted, and especially if
Speaker 1: you shop very frequently, you should feel even worse if
Speaker 1: we're unwilling to forego the convenience. Despite all of this,
Speaker 1: is there anything we can do to minimize our impact
Speaker 1: on the environment. Yes, so you couldn't be a mindful
Speaker 1: online shopper, and the main step would be to consolidate
Speaker 1: your orders. Maybe rather than having several individual packages come
Speaker 1: to your door through the week, if you can load
Speaker 1: up your cart and make one order each week. That's
Speaker 1: the kind of thing individual consumers can do to decrease
Speaker 1: the environmental impact. Let's say Jeff Bezos wakes up tomorrow,
Speaker 1: he says, yes, employees, I I heard you loud and clearer,
Speaker 1: and we're going to take this issue head on. What
Speaker 1: are what are some changes Amazon could make right now
Speaker 1: to soften it's it's uh impact. So I think one
Speaker 1: thing they have to do is think about, you know,
Speaker 1: the incentives that they're currently using, which are are pretty
Speaker 1: bread and butter for their business strategy, are also encouraging
Speaker 1: people to to use these delivery services without much consciousness? Um,
Speaker 1: it's very easy to You're almost encouraged right to use
Speaker 1: the services that way and not really feel like you're
Speaker 1: paying for them by now get it now, get it tomorrow,
Speaker 1: get it today, and it's like the default. I think
Speaker 1: the fastest free one. There needs to be some intentional
Speaker 1: thought in, you know, are we encouraging people to to
Speaker 1: use fast and frequent deliveries? So is Amazon moving in
Speaker 1: that direction? So? Um? Amazon announced at the end of
Speaker 1: the first quarter that they'd be spending money on one
Speaker 1: day shipping. They definitely are feeling the pressure from from
Speaker 1: stores and a lot of these other options people have
Speaker 1: where you can order something online from say Walmart or
Speaker 1: Target and then go and pick it up at the
Speaker 1: store that day. And so in an earnings call in July,
Speaker 1: analysts are very interested to know, Hey, what's going on
Speaker 1: with next day delivery? Can you give us any updates?
Speaker 1: And the CFO, Brianosovski, actually said that it's going very well.
Speaker 1: It did cost a little bit more, but what they're
Speaker 1: finding is by narrowing the delivery promise to one day,
Speaker 1: they're picking up a lot more sales. That that people
Speaker 1: are are more engaged and they're willing to buy more
Speaker 1: things on Amazon. But given everything that Anne told us,
Speaker 1: one day shipping is exactly the opposite of what Amazon
Speaker 1: should be doing if it really cared about the environment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a one day delivery pledge for the last minute need
Speaker 1: is going to make the shopping habits probably only get
Speaker 1: only get worse for the environment. The spencer. What does
Speaker 1: Amazon say about all this? Well, Amazon says that reducing
Speaker 1: the human impacts of climate change is important to the
Speaker 1: company and they have teams dedicated to it. They actually
Speaker 1: mentioned one project they're working on where they're trying to
Speaker 1: develop scientific models to map the carbon footprint and look
Speaker 1: for opportunities to reduce it. They also said that they're
Speaker 1: going to release more information about their company wide carbon
Speaker 1: footprint and their goals and programs later this year. Spencer,
Speaker 1: by the way, is Amazon doing anything to reduce the
Speaker 1: packaging waste from all their deliveries, things like the cardboard boxes,
Speaker 1: because it seems like that's the thing that everyone's concerned about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it can be inconvenient too, and that stuff piles up.
Speaker 1: They do have technology and their warehouses that tries to
Speaker 1: optimize the size of the box for the package, but
Speaker 1: you still hear from people who, you know, order a
Speaker 1: set of headphones and end up with, you know, a
Speaker 1: box the size of the trunk of a car. M hm.
Speaker 1: And what's next for Marin and her group Well, even
Speaker 1: though their shareholder resolution went down in the spring, the
Speaker 1: Amazon employees continue to meet and are still active on
Speaker 1: this issue. They actually have a planned walkout coming up
Speaker 1: on September twenty. More than employees are planning to leave
Speaker 1: their jobs at Amazon for the day. This would be
Speaker 1: both in Seattle and around the world, and this is
Speaker 1: for them to participate in what's known as a global
Speaker 1: climate strike where people at various companies and various countries
Speaker 1: are urging one another to show solidarity on the issue
Speaker 1: of climate change by by walking out of work on
Speaker 1: that day. Spencer Soper, thanks for the story today. Thanks
Speaker 1: m Decrypted is produced by me Aki Ito and Ethan Brooks.
Speaker 1: Emily Buso and Anne vander May are story editors. Francesca
Speaker 1: Levie is the head of Bloomberg podcast We'll see you
Speaker 1: next week.