The largest online store in the world is launching the sale of "waste" for a few coins, aiming to compete with Chinese marketplaces
The largest online retailer Amazon is launching its new store. It will primarily offer cheap products to compete with Chinese marketplaces. However, the sale of goods that can quickly turn into waste may not be entirely positive news from an ecological perspective.
The world's largest online marketplace, American giant Amazon, is launching a new service that should compete with Chinese competition offering extremely cheap products. The company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos could thus become a direct challenger to Chinese marketplaces led by Aliexpress or Temu. Many of the products these marketplaces offer can simply be called waste - as they quickly become just that after purchase, thus contributing to a major ecological disaster.
The popularity of purchasing products that people often don't need before entering a physical store or e-shop, but buy due to low price, continues to grow. Examples of this include not only the aforementioned e-shops Temu, Aliexpress, and many others, but also physical stores led by chains like Action, TEDi, Pepco, and others. It is no surprise then that the world's largest retail online seller Amazon does not want to be left behind and is also putting its iron in the fire.
Many products, from household necessities to various gadgets for electronics and more, do not have a very long lifespan. The reason for this is often poor quality, but also the aforementioned low price. In the case of product damage or at the end of its life, the price does not deter the consumer from easily throwing the product into the trash and ordering a new piece if needed.
However, it is precisely in this way that a huge amount of plastic is created, ending up in landfills and, in the worst case, in the seas. The main blame for the creation of these particles lies with single-use plastics, which include food and beverage packaging, but also very cheap products. According to estimates from 2021, the global production of single-use plastics was around 139.1 million tons. If the current trend continues, the outlook for the future is significantly more pessimistic. The volume of single-use plastics could increase annually to as much as 300 million tons. If we consider the existing problems with plastic waste, the problem will likely be significantly larger in scope in the future.
The launch of a new store with cheap products from Amazon, whose sales volumes often exceed the totals of its competitors, is certainly not positive from an ecological perspective. Unlike Chinese online sellers, Amazon promises that products sold through the Haul service will have all guarantees and can be safely used, for example, in contact with food, but the waste issue is certainly not resolved.
The only solution for the future could therefore be only the limitation of certain plastic products, which is already happening with some food packaging. The ban on plastic bags or straws in EU countries cannot reduce plastics as much as would be necessary to clean ecosystems of this waste.
