Ever since you became a hermit who doesn’t leave the house, you’ve probably been hoarding a stash of cardboard boxes—ones that transported the household items you ordered from Amazon instead of risking a trip to the local CVS.
Now it’s time to complete the trifecta by using the boxes to build a sprawling, multistory cat condo.
This is Amazon’s bright idea for your future.
Jeff Bezos’s trillion-dollar tech conglomerate this week released a list of suggestions for “less packaging, more smiles,” and on that list are a box car—excuse me, “derby winner”—a robot costume for any time of year, and a cat condo for cats that love boxes (i.e. every cat).
This all comes as part of a push for sustainable packaging, which Amazon says is “top priority.” Starting this week, the company will deliver some of its orders in smaller packages. This not only saves paper, but also saves fuel by increasing the number of packages that can fit into each shipment.
“Our team of engineers calculated how much material we can remove from paper boxes while ensuring each delivery arrives undamaged. When our packaging uses less material, weighs less, and is the right size to protect customer orders, we can pack more orders into each delivery, resulting in fewer trips, less fuel burned—all of which minimize our carbon footprint,” the company said in a statement.
Amazon in 2019 announced it was taking “The Climate Pledge,” a commitment to become net zero carbon by 2040. Under the pledge, it agreed to regularly report greenhouse gas emissions and pivot toward strategies in line with the United Nations’ Paris Agreement.
In recent months the company has cranked out multiple initiatives for cutting carbon emissions, after it took heat in January for its ties to oil and gas companies. Last month, it announced a $2 billion fund to pursue sustainable technology, and this month, it announced it had secured 6 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel for its fleet of 80 Amazon Air cargo carriers. The company has also invested in a fleet of 100,000 electric vans for ground deliveries.
But Amazon’s still quite far from net zero carbon. In its sustainability report for 2019, it said it released 51.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide—according to the Environmental Protection Agency, that’s equivalent to 127 billion miles driven by an average passenger vehicle.
Bottom line: Cat condos aren’t going to save the planet, but if your cat is in the market for an upgrade, you can find the instructions here, courtesy of Amazon.
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