U.S. environmentally and socially responsible investor Green Century Funds together with Amalgamated Bank led the filing of a shareholder proposal on Dec. 15, 2022, pressing Amazon to fully quantify and disclose its scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions. This was followed up by the filing of a shareholder resolution with Amazon on Dec. 19, 2022, via As You Sow, requesting the company measure and disclose the emissions from its full value chain. The resolution will be voted on at Amazon’s next annual general meeting in May 2023.
Scope 3 emissions, which include elements that occur outside of a company’s direct control, such as transport, can represent an enormous portion of a retailer’s carbon footprint. In 2021, two other US giants of retail Walmart and Target reported on every category of their scope 3 emissions, which comprised 95 percent and 97 percent of their total greenhouse gas output, respectively. By contrast, Amazon reported on only a portion of its scope 3 emissions, including product-related emissions for its Amazon-branded products such as Kindles, Fire TVs or Whole Foods’ 365 products. According to Green Century, these represent only 1 percent of Amazon’s sales, and as such, it’s likely that Amazon is significantly undercounting its total emissions.
Green Century Funds president Leslie Samuelrich said of Amazon: “It needs to play by the same set of rules as everyone else and disclose all indirect emissions up and down its value chain.” Green Century shareholder advocate Andrea Ranger added: “This accounting is important because you can’t manage what you can’t measure.”
