At the recent Climate Week NYC event, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and Chief Sustainability Officer Kara Hurst outlined how we’re working to embed sustainability initiatives into our core operations, invest in sustainability-focused tech, and share our learnings.

Here are a few of these initiatives:

• Regionalizing our fulfillment center operations leads to fewer miles driven: We regionalized the US fulfillment network into eight hubs to get items closer to customers in order to deliver products faster. For you, rapid delivery can be a boost to your businesses, because faster delivery speeds drive increased sales conversion.

  Because we’re placing items closer to customers, we’re eliminating some of the air transport, and our vans are traveling shorter distances - some of which are electric delivery vehicles with zero tailpipe emissions. And with fewer miles to travel, we have fewer delivery-related carbon emissions. Last year, the new model meant our operations teams and delivery service partners could avoid nearly 16 million miles of travel.

• Opening up our playbook is to encourage other companies to decarbonize their businesses: We recently launched the Amazon Sustainability Exchange: a free website that shares our methodologies, data, and playbooks for decarbonization across areas like buildings, transportation, and renewable energy procurement.

  Andy Jassy notes: "Most of the technology companies have been working hard at renewable energy. And, we got there in 2023. If you think about what Amazon does as a more industrialized company, you think about all the fulfillment centers we have, the packaging we have, the last mile transportation, the middle mile trucking, the ocean freight, and the air travel that we do; that is a very different equation and much harder to do. There is a lot of invention left to happen, and we are doing a lot of it ourselves, but we're also working with a big partner community. The reality is that if we want to get to our collective goal, it doesn't work if just one company gets there. We all have to do it together."

To learn more about our efforts, go to About Amazon or Amazon Sustainability.