Amazon Fulfillment Centers

Amazon is the largest e-commerce company in the world (Rodrigue 2020). As of now, there are currently 104 Amazon fulfillment centers across the US (Amazon Seller Central, 2021). However, these centers generate more vehicle traffic including the use of trucks and airplanes to deliver and receive packages. This is environmentally detrimental, especially to the surrounding community as they release air pollutants and greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

Understanding the impact of Amazon on surrounding communities is especially relevant with the advent of Covid-19, which has driven an increase in Amazon sales. Amazon is also continuing to grow. In 2020, Amazon increased fulfillment and network square footage by 50% and total revenue increased by 35% as compared to 2019 (Takefman 2021). With the growth of business, Amazon facilities will continue to multiply.

Air quality index, or AQI, is a measure of air quality based off of the concentrations of ground-level ozone particle pollution (including PM2.5, PM10), carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide in the air (AirNow n.d.). Air quality index values above 101 indicate unhealthy levels for sensitive groups, while values 151 to 200 are unhealthy for the general public. Values 201 to 300 indicate very unhealthy levels, validating a public health alert.

The below graphs summarize the number of days per year with AQI above 101 (indicating unhealthy for sensitive groups, unhealthy, and very unhealthy) for the counties with Amazon fulfillment centers.

Across counties with fulfillment centers, there were huge disparities between the number of unhealthy AQI days per year, with differences exceeding 100 unhealthy AQI days. To examine the correlation between number of Amazon fulfillment centers, we reoriented the graph to show only counties with more than 1 fulfillment center.

The result was a graph with three counties in California that each had five or more Amazon fulfillment centers. The disparity was still large, with San Bernardino and Riverside experiencing more than 100 additional days of unhealthy air quality compared with San Joaquin County. However, because of the variability of trendlines, we paused to ask: why are certain areas experiencing more bad AQI days than others? What geographic or industrial factors could be contributing to the quality of air? Could Amazon be doing better to alleviate its strain on the air quality of surrounding communities?

Amazon fulfillment centers are located in the main logistic hubs in California: Stockton, Chino, San-Bernardino Riverside, Long Beach, etc. Not only are they located near airports, railways, and ocean transportation, most of these distribution centers are part of a massive campus warehouse setting (NFI Industries 2016). The map below supports this densely packed layout as it shows the fulfillment centers are close to remotely sensed NOx data points of heavy industry. For example, near the Stockton fulfillment center, there are emitters like Lit Industrial LP, Value Products Inc, Quest Industries LLC, etc. Therefore, Amazon fulfillment centers are not the only sources of industrial pollutants within the area.

Amazon is a major employer in the region and has created thousands of jobs for San Bernardino-Riverside residents (Knoblauch 2021). However, is this economic benefit worth negative impacts towards the environment and the community?

According to the 2019 American Lung Association's State of the Air report, San-Bernardino Riverside is ranked number one for most people at risk in the top 25 ozone-polluted cities in the United States, thereby contributing to the county's asthma rates being twice as large as the national average (American Lung Association 2019; California Department of Public Health n.d.). This devastating environmental condition is due to a culmination of emissions from the urban area's transportation hub, distribution center, and geographical disadvantage—the valley's mountains trapping air pollution.

However, the risks towards human health due to air pollution are amplified in neighborhoods with low-income communities of color for two key reasons. First, as we can see in the map below, all of these facilities have been disproportionately built in areas that are predominantly Hispanic or Latino and have a median household income that is less than $70,000. 

The second most pressing equity challenge is these neighborhoods are comparatively overburdened by pollution due to the rapid rise of e-commerce. Specifically, the diesel freight truck routes to-and-from the fulfillment centers pass through these areas. As a result, minorities within the county have a greater chance of facing health issues from chronic asthma to cancer to increased infant mortality rates.

According to the chapter “The Three E’s” in Planning for Sustainability: Creating Livable, Equitable, and Ecological Communities by Stephen Wheeler, these two cases of inequity in San Bernardino-Riverside go beyond our area of focus; it is pertinent in almost all of the Amazon facility locations. One of the root causes of the growing regional inequalities is unfair public policy decision-making coupled with limited legal recourse. By holding council meetings during the daytime, low-income and minority community members are underrepresented as they are busy trying to make ends meet and thereby excluded from the decision process that directly impacts their quality of life (Wheeler 2013). This leads to their lack of political influence and results in a downward spiral, further reducing their ability to voice their opinions in their community. Consequently, these groups are also more likely to live near landfills and be exposed to hazardous waste and chemicals, leading to their healthcare woes. This is a systemic problem leading to an inequitable distribution of resources and power, primarily impacting low-income, minority citizens, as we have seen in San Bernardino-Riverside.

• In the Inland Empire -- 18,000 people employed directly by Amazon, 34,600 non-Amazon jobs, drop in unemployment by more than 7% (Amazon 2018) 
• San Bernardino -- unemployment 15% (2012) to 5% (2018) Poverty rate 23.4% (2011) to 28.1% (2016) , median household income in 2016, at $38,456, 4% lower than it was in 2011 (Semuels 2018) 
• Overall growth claims are contested -- warehousing and storage jobs increased by 30%, but there were no net increases in employment in the private sector. (EPI 2018) 
• Amazon typically did not impact hired worker’s wages, with changes ranging from -1.7% to 0.5%. (Jones and Zipperer 2018)

With increasing success over brick-and-mortar stores, the digital e-commerce giant Amazon rapidly increased its physical footprint in the last decade (Rodrigue 2020). Amazon continues to increase consumer expectations with the new normal that its service Amazon Prime presents: two-day (or even same-day) delivery and free shipping. These services are only made possible by its personal army of delivery vehicles and extreme warehousing strategies (Rodrigue 2020). However, these consumer-serving upgrades have driven unsustainable practices that contribute to unhealthy air quality in places with heavy Amazon activity such as San Bernardino.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, even more consumers have acclimated to regularly shopping through online channels, fueling Amazon’s focus on optimization. Vehicle-intensive business strategies such as last-mile delivery beg the question of environmental toll (Collins 2021). Amazon is certainly taking actions to address its impact. The company pledges carbon neutrality by 2040 and has invested in many large-scale changes such as through greener vehicles (Sanicola 2021). In just the past week, Amazon has joined the Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest finance (LEAF) Coalition, a public private partnership involving the United States, Norway, Britain, and large companies such as Nestle in an effort to protect forests (Jessop 2021). However, these large-scale efforts do little to address Amazon’s prolonged and disproportionate impact on low-income communities of color. With heavy trucks bringing pollution in close proximity to schools and neighborhoods and contributing to unhealthy air quality during significant portions of the year in deeply affected areas, Amazon cannot call its efforts sustainably-minded (Levin 2021).