Gado/Getty Images
- Some of Amazon's millions of orders are being delivered without extra packaging.
- The change is part of the company's efforts to reduce additional costs and address its climate impact, the Wall Street Journal reported.
- The packaging change could cause concerns, including publicizing purchases and stolen packages.
Mountains of brown boxes printed with Amazon's black arrow and blue logo stacked up on doorsteps might be a thing of the past.
Already about 11% of Amazon's millions of deliveries are showing up without Amazon's name-brand packaging, the Wall Street Journal reported. Various iterations of these packaging changes have been around at Amazon since 2015, the company told Insider. This current change, to eliminate or cut down on extra packaging and work with brands on new packaging that does not need an additional box, is part of the company's efforts to reduce costs, and address customer feedback and its climate impact.
This year, the company has delivered around 1.8 billion packages — which can add up to a lot of discarded Amazon packaging.
But the new packaging, or lack thereof, could cause some concerns.
The Journal notes that items like toilet paper, baby wipes, trash bags, and Brita water filters could start showing up in their original packaging for all your neighbors to see. Besides the potential embarrassment of publicizing your purchases, there's a more practical concern of package theft.
To address those concerns, Amazon shoppers do still have the option to select extra packaging at no additional charge for items in their orders, the company told Insider. To ensure items are arriving to customers undamaged, the company has conducted multiple tests on items it sells to see which packages can be shipped without additional packaging. Only items that have gone through these tests will be shipped without extra packaging, the company said. For other products, Amazon is working with vendors to redesign their packaging so it withstands delivery conditions.
Certain items will always be shipped with additional packing, such as items that may require additional privacy, the company said. These items include collectibles, such as some Lego sets where customers may want to keep the original packaging. Through monitoring customer feedback on deliveries, Amazon said it will also adjust what items customers prefer to be shipped with extra packaging.