A Massive Change Is Coming to Amazon Deliveries in Idaho Soon

Amazon just confirmed that Prime Day 2024 is coming up July 16-17. When your orders arrive, what you find inside will probably look significantly different from what you’re used to.

According to the online retail giant, their top selling deals on Prime Day 2023 were Fire TV sticks, Laneige Lip Glowy Balm and Apple Airpods. If these were some of the items you purchased, you know that size wise? They’re not very large. Yet, for some reason, they’d show up in boxes big enough to say “well, this seems excessive.” 

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When you opened them? Things got even more excessive as you pulled out a huge chain of those plastic air pillows. We don’t know about you, but the air pillows that came with the contour pallet we ordered filled up our entire office trash can. It just seemed like such a waste! 

And Amazon agrees that maybe, just maybe, the way they were trying to keep your items safe from damage wasn’t the most sustainable option. That’s why they recently announced a major change. In North America, they’ve replaced 95% of those plastic air pillows with a material. They hope to eliminated their use completely by 2025. According to the statement, their fulfillment centers like the one that opened in Nampa in 2020, are transitioning to using paper filler made of 100% recycled materials. The filler itself is also recyclable. 

They estimate that using the new filler paper, which was tested at Amazon’s first automated fulfillment center in Ohio, will keep 15 billion plastic air pillows out of trash cans every year. Amazon also says that very few of the packages that Idahoans order on Prime Day 2024 will contain air pillows when they arrive.

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ABC News talked to employees at a California fulfillment center who said they actually prefer working with the paper than the air pillows. It’s easier to manage and gives the fulfillment center employees getting your orders together more room to do their job.