A Message to Jeff Bezos and Amazon on Addressing the Climate Challenge
By: Mark Tercek
Tags: Sustainability, Esg, Amazon

Photo by Porapak Apichodilok from Pexels

I read today that Jeff Bezos announced he will establish a fund of $10 billion to address the climate challenge. This is good news. Few details about the “how” were included, but in my view adding this amount of capital — as well as the personal engagement of a proven leader like Jeff Bezos to the climate fight — is a very positive thing, indeed.

In the announcement, Bezos noted that, “It’s going to take collective action from big companies, small companies, nation states, global organizations, and individuals.” So Mr. Bezos, I have a better idea for you Amazon: please get your own company more engaged on climate. Amazon is incredibly powerful, and it can be doing so much more. Bigger, bolder action on climate likely will be very positive for your shareholders if the company chooses to do this.

Business leaders are generally much too cautious in tackling climate with a business mindset. Who better that Jeff Bezos and Amazon to challenge this conventional thinking?

Here’s one easy idea that a great company like Amazon could make work fast. As an alternative to Amazon Prime, start offering a new subscription choice to your customers: “Amazon Sustainable.”

Here are some illustrative ideas about how Amazon Sustainable might work:

· Instead of guaranteeing purchases are delivered same day or overnight, customers, are promised that their purchases will be collected over a designated period of time and sent in one much more efficient delivery. (Who said we needed everything overnight anyway?)

· Instead of guaranteeing delivery speed, customers are assured that the transportation mode with the lowest greenhouse gas emissions is selected.

· Instead of these extraordinarily tough, individually-wrapped, battle-ready packages, minimal packaging is provided. Amazon Sustainable customers agree that they can live with a few nicks on some purchases.

· Instead of listing products on the Amazon website by customer review ranking, price, or other factors, products can be filtered by a ranking of their environmental practices — conducted through an independent assessment.

· As ESG appraisals of producers become more prevalent and sophisticated, Amazon provides these assessments to Amazon Sustainable customers, helping us to be smarter about who we buy products from.

· Offsets. I know offsets can be very controversial. But the core idea is a good one. Wouldn’t it be great to have Amazon get in the business of assessing and ranking offsets by their quality? Amazon Sustainable could purchases carbon offsets on customers’ behalf, so that the greenhouse gases associated with physical delivery are abated. Amazon could provide additional offset purchase options so that we, as customers, might address greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of the product.

I could go on and on, but I will spare you. It may be obvious — I’m not an expert in online retailing. But from the conversations I have with smart business leaders, CEOs, and government officials, it seems clear to me that there is a lot of upside for Amazon to start thinking along these lines. And that will be only truer over time as more and more customers become very concerned about climate change.

And it’s not just customers who care:

· Young people today want to work for companies whose values align with theirs. Amazon needs to hire smart, creative young people who want to channel their passion for the planet into business profits.

· Amazon wants loyal shareholders. Have you noticed the huge growth in shareholders who care about ESG considerations?

· Don’t forget government relations. Tech companies with huge market shares are getting a lot of attention and criticism from various watchdogs and governmental bodies. Don’t wait for a wrist-slap. It’s a good idea to show policy leaders and concerned stakeholders you can make positive contributions (for both the environment, and the bottom line).

· And what about future business opportunities? It simply must be the case for a company with huge ambition like Amazon that being a highly-engaged leader in the fight to address climate change leads to big new opportunities.

So, in conclusion, thank you Mr. Bezos for your huge, personal commitment to fund the battle to address climate change. I’m very optimistic that your personal engagement will make a positive difference. Thank you.

But what we really need is for business itself to be more proactive and ambitious in this arena. I’ve long been puzzled why so many of your fellow CEOs seem so timid on this front. I can’t think of any CEO better than you, or any company better than Amazon, to show the way forward

And yes — please convert this Amazon Prime customer to Amazon Sustainable.