Amazon is known for its shameless tax avoidance, workers’ rights abuses, environmental impacts and much more. The company has been the subject of an Ethical Consumer global boycott call since 2012.
We’ve summarised the key ethical issues to consider when it comes to Amazon.
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Our research highlights many ethical issues for Amazon, including: tax conduct, company ethos, workers' rights, tech sustainability, climate change, conflict minerals, agriculture, palm oil sourcing, packaging, and animal products. The company scored 40 points or less in each of these categories.
Below we outline some of these issues. To see the full detailed stories, and Amazon's overall ethical rating, please sign in or subscribe.
In 2012, Ethical Consumer initiated a boycott of Amazon due to its significant tax avoidance practices. For instance, in 2011, despite being the world's largest online retailer with UK sales reaching £2.9 billion, Amazon paid only £1.8 million in corporation tax. At the prevailing corporation tax rate, this figure should have exceeded £8 million.
Things have become much worse since then.
In 2021, fuelled by the pandemic, Amazon reported a near 200-percent rise in profits, yet taxes paid by the company barely increased on the previous years.
Research by Ethical Consumer calculated that, in 2021, up to half a billion pounds (£500,000,000) could have been lost to the UK public purse from the corporation tax avoidance of Amazon.
To make matters even worse, it was reported in June 2023 that Amazon received a tax credit of £7.7m. This means that in 2022, Amazon’s main UK division not only avoided paying taxes, it took from the pot that tax-payers filled.
As a surprise move, after two years of not paying any corporation tax, in 2023 Amazon paid an estimated £18.7million. This was about 4% of the amount it was likely due. In other words, in 2023 Amazon could have retained about £433 million worth of taxes from UK public services.
Amazon's ethical score lost points for excessive executive remuneration. In 2021, CEO Andrew R Jassy received $212,701,169, which decreased to $1.3 million in 2022. However, two other executives still received over $40 million (£38m) each in 2022, raising concerns about fair distribution of wealth within the company.
An average Amazon warehouse worker in the UK earns just under £14 an hour.
Amazon also recently got involved in nuclear power. It announced in October 2024 that it was investing half a billion pounds to build a small modular nuclear reactor to fulfil the growing energy needs of its data centres run by its subsidiary Amazon Web Services (AWS).
It also lost points for membership of various lobby groups such as the World Economic Forum, Eurocommerce or the Business Roundtable. These organisations tend to exert undue corporate influence on policy-makers in favour of market solutions that are potentially detrimental to the environment and human rights.
Amazon faces significant criticism regarding its treatment of workers. A 2022 report by the Centre for Law and Work and Berkeley University of California asserts that, despite Amazon's claims, the company "absolutely does not" adhere to international labour standards, highlighting concerns about workers' rights and welfare.
On many occasions Amazon has aggressively opposed unionisation and organising efforts at its warehouses. In July 2024 in a historic vote, Amazon workers very narrowly rejected a union in its Coventry warehouse. Labour union GMB, which led the unionising efforts accused Amazon of union busting.
It claimed that anti-union messages were spread and anti-union seminars were held ahead of the vote. The Amazon workers in Coventry, supported by GMB, intend to continue to strike for better pay and union rights while GMB says it won’t give up.
Amazon has so far successfully beat unionising efforts. In trying to prevent collective bargaining within its workforce, Amazon has reportedly spent $14 million (£10.8 million) on anti-union consultants in 2022.
In October 2021, 1400 UK delivery drivers sued Amazon seeking employment rights, including minimum wage and holiday pay. In March 2023 Amazon tried to dismiss the lawsuit but a judge ruled that it could proceed.
Amazon suppliers don’t receive better treatment either from the company. Amazon was listed in the UK’s Groceries Code Adjudicator (GCA) survey for the first time in 2023. The GCA is responsible for encouraging, monitoring and enforcing compliance with the Code and thus for regulating the relationships between the UK's largest grocery retailers and their direct suppliers. Perhaps unsurprisingly Amazon jumped straight to the last place of the list with almost four times as many accusations of code violations as the next company up. And its performance declined in 2024.
A critical human rights concern is Amazon's sourcing of conflict minerals and cotton without sufficiently robust policies. This raises the risk of these products originating from regions with documented human rights abuses, such as Turkmenistan (cotton sector) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (conflict minerals). Vague commitments are insufficient; stronger measures are needed to ensure a supply chain free from violations.
In June 2023 Amazon agreed to pay $25 million in fines to settle alleged privacy violations. These involved its voice assistant Alexa and doorbell camera Ring. US’s Federal Trade Commission claims in one lawsuit that the tech company kept recordings of children's conversations with its voice assistant Alexa but failed to delete them – as it had promised it would – when parents asked it to do so.
Amazon agreed to pay another $5.8 million, because Ring had allowed employees and contractors to watch recordings of customers' private spaces, sometimes including bedrooms and bathrooms.
While Amazon reports its greenhouse gas emissions, it employs methods that may present a more favorable picture than reality. For instance, its Scope 2 emissions are reported using a market-based approach, which tends to yield lower figures.
The Guardian notes a concerning trend, calculating that Amazon’s actual scope 2 emissions are 1.2 times higher than the company's reported figures.
Its scope 3 emissions also aren’t comprehensive. For example, its purchased goods and services only included Amazon-branded products. These account for only a small proportion of its corporate purchases, less than 40% according to Amazon’s own statistics.
According to other sources, including the organisation Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, this number could be as low as a staggering 1%. This suggests that Amazon’s scope 3 emissions could be 100 times higher than claimed by the company.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company's leading cloud computing division, controls approximately third of the global cloud market. In 2018, WikiLeaks disclosed the locations of more than 100 AWS data centres worldwide, with over 50 in the US and others in tax havens like Luxembourg, Singapore, and Ireland.
According to Not Here Not Anywhere (NHNA), data centres account for about one fifth of all electricity use in Ireland and it is predicted to increase to over a quarter by 2028. Although renewable electricity generation is on the rise, data centres expansion may outpace this.
Amazon Employees for Climate Justice recently says that in spite of the company claiming that its operations are run entirely on renewable sources of power, in truth just 22 percent of power used by the company's data centres is from renewables.
Amazon has no policy for genetically modified organisms, the use of pesticides, or agricultural run-off. It stated in its 2022 Sustainability report that it aims to reduce its agricultural impact but it largely discussed funding relevant projects as opposed to addressing its own impacts.
Amazon does address reducing water use in its supply chain. It has an active stewardship programme in its operations in India and it achieved a Water Neutrality Index (WNI) of 1. The WNI defines “water neutral” as the amount of water conserved being equal to the quantity of water consumed, with a score of 1.
The large-scale production of palm oil is linked to rainforest destruction, contributing to climate change, biodiversity loss, and human rights issues. While some of Amazon's products use palm oil from certified supply chainns, less than 50% is certified, leaving a significant portion untraceable and potentially linked to environmental and human rights abuses.
As a company that relies on packaging, and has no evidence of reducing packaging in its supply chain or the packaging of its products.
It has, though, reduced per-shipment packaging weight by 41% on average since 2015. Analysts however, believe that Amazon makes two million daily parcel deliveries worldwide. Recycling company Business Waste has called out the company and suggested that it takes cardboard boxes back from customers to increase recycling rates. In the UK a third of all the cardboard may end up in landfill. Business Waste believes that Amazon needs to take some responsibility for its packaging.
Amazon owns various tech products but only scores badly when it comes to tech sustainability.
The repairability and warranty on its tech devices are all at the lower end of the scale. It does, however, use a fair amount of recycled materials. It says that some of its products are made from majority- or all-recycled content. Some for example contain 75% recycled plastic, 100% recycled yarn, 100% recycled aluminium, and 90% recycled magnesium. It also claims to have incorporated 50% recycled plastic into certain power adapters that ship with its devices.
Amazon has an all round inadequate animal welfare policy.
It has no policy on animal testing, sells products made of factory farmed animals and sells live animals, such as lobsters on its website. Fur coats made of racoons, rabbits and chinchillas are also for sale on its website.
It was criticised by PETA in 2023 for its “continued sale of Thai coconut milk even after learning of PETA Asia’s investigations revealing that monkeys are forced to pick coconuts in Thailand and are trained through fear of punishment, caged in isolation, and chained for life”.
Amazon's policy prohibits listings of endangered species, but only to the extent required by law. This indicates a minimal commitment to the well-being of other species, as it merely adheres to legal obligations rather than proactively promoting animal welfare.
More information on all these topics is on our Boycott Amazon page.
The text above was written in October 2024.
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