Matt Reynolds: Welcome to the Packaging World Video Interview series. I'm Matt Reynolds, editor of Packaging World, and in this video series, we're going to dove into the latest innovations, trends and challenges shaping the packaging industry.
From groundbreaking technologies to sustainability initiatives and operational strategies, we bring industry leader knowledge to you, serving up the insights that matter most.
Whether you're here to stay ahead of emerging trends, discover new solutions, or gain a deeper understanding of what's driving packaging today, you're in the right place. Let's get started.
Paul Jenkins: Thanks, Matt. My name's Paul Jenkins, managing director of U.K. packaging innovation consultancy ThePackHub, and I'm delighted today to be joined by Pat Lindner, VP of mechatronics and sustainable packaging at Amazon. Welcome, Pat.
Pat Lindner: Hi. Thanks so much, Paul. Nice to be here.
Paul Jenkins: Very grateful you could join us today. And could you start by explaining your role at Amazon and how mechatronics and sustainable packaging fit into your remit.
Pat Lindner: Yeah, so my name is Pat Lindner, as you mentioned, and I'm the vice president of mechatronics and sustainable packaging. What that means is that we're responsible for all of Amazon's work around packaging to ship products safely to our customers, and also the automation that's associated with that. In some cases, we package our items manually and many times as we're starting to do more, we develop robotic automation machines to do the packaging.
Paul Jenkins: Excellent. I mean, Amazon has been dramatically overhauling its packaging approach. What is the overarching vision that guides Amazon's packaging strategy?
Pat Lindner: You know, our packaging strategy is really driven by, first of all, being obsessed with our customer. That's one of our leadership principles. And so first and foremost, it's really important that we deliver the product to the customer as they intended to receive it. And so safety in our packaging is the most important thing. And from there we really drive towards sustainability, which, I'm sure you know, really overlaps very well with the customer needs.
So what we do is we work hard to make sure that the products are packaged without a lot of void space or without a lot of waste. We want them to be easy to open. And then last, we want them to be easy to recycle right at the curbside.
Paul Jenkins: Excellent. And Amazon has been moving from plastic to paper-based formats. And what drove that decision and what have been your biggest successes so far?
Pat Lindner: Yeah, so it's really the last piece that I mentioned, and that is easy to recycle. And plastics, as you know, are good for a lot of different applications. You know, they provide water resistance, chemical resistance, and in some cases it's important to use plastics. But plastics also have a challenge in that they're not conveniently curbside recyclable in all jurisdictions.
As a result, plastics packaging tends to be pretty low in its amount of recycling that's actually done. And so with that, and understanding what our customer's needs are, we want to make it easy for them to recycle, convenient right at the curbside, so you don't have to even take it to a drop-off location. And of course, what that means in many cases is paper based packaging because throughout the world, in Europe as well as in the United States, paper packaging is in general much more available to be recycled right at your curbside.
Paul Jenkins: Excellent, I mean, it sounds like a significant challenge there. So, what what technical or operational challenges have you had to overcome, transitioning to paper?
Pat Lindner: Yeah, so this is a journey that we've been on for quite some time, really back to at least five years ago, in some cases even before that. And so some of the challenges for us is really making paper behave like plastic. And that's a real challenge, which means in some cases we need new paper based products that are tear resistant, weather resistant, and robust enough for the customer to make sure that we can get the product to the customer.
We've done a couple of things here which I'm really proud of on the innovation side. The first one is that last year we converted our entire fulfillment center network, hundreds of facilities, trained thousands of our associates who do the packing, to replace plastic air pillows with curbside recyclable paper. And one of the challenges there is that we really wanted to make sure we have the most sustainable product possible. So, we put the requirement that paper, which we call paper dunnage that goes inside of boxes, we made sure that that contained 100% recycled content. And so, this is all recycled post-consumer or post industrial paper that we're using there, and of course it is in of itself recyclable at the curbside.
But it's not just that, one of the challenges with plastic air pillows is that they actually protect items pretty well inside the box. And so the innovation for us was to really go to something that was 100% curbside recyclable, contain all recycled content, and develop the properties such that they protected the products better or at least the same, but preferably better than what the plastic air pillows have done.
And so, the way we think about innovation in general, and I can certainly share some other examples here too, but the way we think about innovation is that we develop the product, we test it in our labs extensively, and then we roll it out to, say a handful of our fulfillment centers. Once we're confident that we have the right technology, which for us was to make sure it worked well for our associates in these paper, this transition of paper dunnage, as well as it protected the products better or equal to air pillows, plastic air pillows.
Once we've done that at a handful of sites, then we can take that very quickly across the entire network, which again is hundreds of fulfillment centers, as well as training thousands of our employees all around the world. And so this is enabled us last year to eliminate 15 billion plastic air pillows. And it was our largest contributor to our overall plastics reduction to date.
And we have been able to, as a result of this, in part as a result of this, go from 2023, our packaging contained, 65% of our delivery packaging contained plastics. In 2024, it was down to 37%. So 65% to 37% driven a lot by this initiative around replacing plastic air pillows.
Paul Jenkins: Excellent. You mentioned about some of the functional changes to paper; you've still got to ensure that the paper is recyclable as well, haven't you?
Pat Lindner: Yeah absolutely. The paper has to be recyclable, and not only the paper but any coatings we put on the paper. And so I'll give you an example of that. We have developed new automation machines that package our items, right-size package our items to minimize the amount of void space in there. And one of the machines was a machine that we retrofitted that makes bags.
We call them unpadded bags because they're just normal kraft paper. But it's not just that, because if you want to convert these machines that previously made just plastic bags into paper, you need to find a way to heat seal that paper, and of course that requires a coating. And a coating on the inside, you know, one way to do it would be use just plain old laminate plastics, but that would make the bag not recyclable.
So we invented some new materials that are water-based coatings that go on the inside of the paper. And that way, just like plastic can be heat sealed. Now that paper with the coating on the inside can also be heat sealed. And so for us, it's not just about the machinery and the robotics. It's matching that up with our material science and our chemistry that goes into making the holistic solutions.
Paul Jenkins: You just mentioned right sizing, and that's what I would like to discuss next. I read somewhere that Amazon has saved hundreds of thousands of tons of packaging material in recent times. How has automation and mechatronics helped Amazon right-size your packaging and reduce waste?
Pat Lindner: Yeah, so I think, we try to right-size packaging even in our manual processes. But with automation, what we can do is we can use computer vision to measure the item exactly to the right exact size, and then think of our automation machines as not just putting a box over something or putting in a bag, but more wrapping around the product so that it is rightsize to the extent possible and also protects the item.
And so with automation, you can use machine learning, computer vision, and other techniques to really make sure that that technology wraps rather than just put something inside of a bag or a box.
Paul Jenkins: OK, excellent. And something else I'd like to discuss is Ships In Product Packaging, SIPP, that is a really great initiative and a really straightforward, it's not straightforward once we implement, but it sounds like it should be. Could you explore that a little more for me?
Pat Lindner: Absolutely. So yeah, we call this our Ships In Product Packaging, which is very simply where we do not add any Amazon packaging whatsoever in our fulfillment process. And so in this case, what we do is very carefully and thoroughly test different items that may come into our inventory and make sure that they can survive the ship, the shipping process to the customer.
Again, what's most important is we get the product to the customer safely and undamaged, and so we have to do this extensive testing. And in 2024 globally, 12% of our packaging was shipped, or items were shipped, without us having to add any additional packaging, which is of course great for the customer because they don't have any material to dispose of or recycle even, and of course it's good for the environment because we're not adding in additional packaging and minimizing wherever we can. And so this is a program that we continue to test, we continue to learn and expand all around the world.
Paul Jenkins: Yeah, average packaging weight is reduced and you can get more shipments in a truck as well I guess.
Pat Lindner: Exactly. So, you know, that's why we find most innovations that are good for the customer are also good for the environment. So reducing packaging, lightweighting packaging, eliminating packaging wherever we can, that's really helpful. You know, of course just in normal operation inside of fulfillment centers. But to your point, you know, lighter packaging means, you know less fuel on the road to deliver. We can fit, smaller packaging means we can fit more items inside of a truck or inside of a delivery van, and they're easier for a delivery, people who deliver, easier for them to deliver to the doorstep. And so that's why we really believe when we innovate for the customer, we innovate for the environment as well.
Paul Jenkins: Excellent. So million dollar question, what measurable impact have all these changes had from an environmental point of view and also an operational one?
Pat Lindner: Yeah, I think first of all, first and foremost, it really comes down to overall reducing packaging. And since 2025, or 2015, I apologize, we have eliminated or avoided 4.2 million metric tons of packaging, and so reducing the amount, you know, trying to drive as much to recycle is important. And then with that, of course in Europe, we've already converted to 100% paper packaging.
So all of our packaging is curbside recyclable. That's a really important component for the environment and is easy for the customer to recycle. And then in North America we've gone from 65% of our packaging contained plastics in 2023 down to 37% in 2024, continue to drive that down. And the way to think about that is we made a significant impact on the amount of packaging that is curbside recyclable.
Paul Jenkins: Excellent. And how have your customers reacted to these packaging changes?
Pat Lindner: It's been very positive. We've been absolutely delighted. First and foremost, customers liked that the items that they receive are undamaged and that's really important to us. You know, we could have just put every, you know, plastic bag into a box, but that would not have been right for the customer. Would have been a lot more packaging to deal with.
And so what we've done is as we've gone through this, we've done a lot of work on social media, a lot of events such as this, and we've received really positive feedback. We've actually had some fun with it, too. One of the things that we've done is done some campaigns, social media campaigns and advertisements which highlight how pets seem to enjoy our packaging.
And one of the things in particular has been a real big hit, one of the best hits we've had in a long time, around packaging anyway, is the fact that dogs prefer the paper dunnage over, you know, popping the plastic air pillows. And so we have fun with it, we have fun with cats, so we have fun with dogs. And the feedback has been like, you know, "Hey, it's great Amazon is is doing some innovative things that are good for the customer as well as good for sustainability."
Paul Jenkins: So who prefers your packaging more, cats or dogs?
Pat Lindner: Oh, my dogs do. My dogs love my packaging. In fact, I posted something of one of my puppies on LinkedIn over the holidays, and she just went crazy. And it was one of my top, you know, one of my top posts on LinkedIn in terms of impressions. So it's a lot of fun to see the reaction that we get from - people love their pets and people love their packaging, and we try to match the two together.
Paul Jenkins: Perfect, excellent. So finally, looking ahead, what developments or innovations in sustainable packaging are you most excited about?
Pat Lindner: Yeah, I think it's all along these same paths, continuing to get better at right-sizing our packaging, protecting the items, making them easier to open. We get a lot of feedback from customers that the easier something is to just tear open and then just fold up like in a bag and recycle and put in the recycle bin, the easier that is, the better the experience is for the customer.
And so what that means for us is continue to invest in material science, material science for new coatings, new adhesives, new package types, new paper types that may be more flexible, more tear resistant. And so we have a pretty significant team really focused on materials science and the chemistry of paper, which is pretty, pretty exciting.
We're also doing, in the event that you need to develop or use materials that contain plastics, we're also doing a lot of innovation in that area. So we have chemists developing easier to recycle plastics as well as bioplastics, using bioplastics when you have to use plastics, because sometimes you just really don't have a choice in order to protect the product.
The second thing that we're doing in addition to material science is really around this mechatronics, which is really mechanical engineering matched up with electronics and software. That's the fancy name for that. And so what we do, it's really robotics and automation. We continue to invest in new platforms there for unpadded bags as well as situations where the items need a little bit more protection with some type of a paper that has padding, not just a thin layer of kraft paper, but also has some padding on the inside. So we have automation machines that are doing that.
And then the third thing is really around A.I. and machine learning. We have the ability with all the inventory we have to be able to measure items and then say, have our algorithms look at an item or maybe come into our inventory and say, "Hey, that item looks like an item that we've successfully packaged in this package type through this automation machine, and it should therefore go to that packaging machine."
The more we can automate that with machine learning, match it with our material science, and then the automation machinery itself the more successful we'll be at meeting our goals inside of Amazon as well as delighting the customer.
Paul Jenkins: Excellent, so it seems like there's lots more opportunity to continue to improve from a sustainable point of view.
Pat Lindner: There really is. And, you know, there's places where I think we've already exceeded expectations. This, you know, converting this one bagging machine that previously contained just plastics, just made plastic bags, and now we can make these, you know, water-based-coated paper-based packaging. We've eliminated or avoided the use of 134 million plastic bags just from that innovation alone.
And, that's something if you had asked me a year, maybe a year and a half ago if that was possible, I'd say that's going to be really difficult. And the challenge is just everything that I mentioned before, the coating, the paper itself, the sealing process, you know, redesigning or retrofitting a machine that was designed for plastics. But, you know, our engineers and chemists did it, and we're now in the process of really ramping up that technology across our entire network.
Paul Jenkins: OK, I guess what you've just said with your three initiatives, you've just proved as market leader, the biggest player in e-commerce, you need to be setting an example and leading in that sense.
Pat Lindner: Yeah, it's important for us to set an example because our customers expect it. We're so customer obsessed. That's what the expectation is. They expect us to be on the leading edge in all areas, and that includes packaging. And I think the other thing I want to mention is that we can't do this alone. We have a lot of partners on the material science side, the paper, adhesives, automation, even recycling partners that we work with to make sure that our products are recyclable. We work with universities. It's really important that we have a large ecosystem because we can't do this alone. We may be doing some of the inventing, and we are because we understand our network better than anybody, but all these partners are super important to us and can't do it without them.
Paul Jenkins: Thank you. Thank you very much for sharing some really interesting insights into the world of Amazon. And Pat Lindner of Amazon, thank you so much for your time.
Pat Lindner: Thank you, Paul.
