Amazon cut the share of its North American shipments that use single-use plastic packaging from 65% to 37% over one year, mostly by moving to extensible paper, which it began rolling out across the region in 2025 after using it in Europe since 2021. That paper stretches 5% to 7% before it tears, two to three times as much as standard Kraft paper, so it wraps tightly around products and can run through automated packing machines that Amazon retrofitted to handle paper instead of plastic. Those machines kept 288 million plastic bags out of North American shipments last year, but they still can’t pack oversized items or anything with magnets.
