It was interesting to see how on 6 April 2023 at around 12 noon about ten BBA sem 6 Operations students of Alliance School of Business Bangalore interacted with Easaw George, Amazon executive in an online session from his Bangalore home.
The BBA students were very inquisitive with questions right from the moment Easaw finished his initial explanation about the Amazon initiatives in environmental sustainability. The class was on Green Energy and Sustainability.
Easaw explained about the Climate pledge of Amazon which already has more than 200 global corporations signed in and participating besides Amazon initiatives like buying 100,000 EV delivery vans in US.
Click here for the latest 101 page Amazon Sustainability report for 2021.
Besides asking questions relating to Anazon's commitment to environmental Sustainability, the students asked how Amazon is interested in playing the lead role in environmental sustainability initiatives across the world. Being #2 in the Fortune 500 list of companies, just behind Walmart (btw Walmart and Amazon are the only 2 global corporate giants who have crossed $500 billion annual turnover) Amazon has a lot of responsibility and commitment to ensure it's operations are least damaging to the environment. Read what Fortune magazine writes on Amazon.
If the corporate giants like Walmart, Amazon, Toyota and Volkswagen besides the other six in the top 10 of the Fortune 500 global list ensure and insist their suppliers also be equally responsible to the environment, it can tackle at least 20-30 percent of global pollution, resource depletion, optimal energy usage, reduction in biodiversity and waste management issues of the world. In terms of supply chain effectiveness and transportation efficiency, Amazon is already working at 4x the industry standard.
When a global giant like Amazon takes the lead it is not only about taking the climate pledge, but also on enforcing environmental sustainability among its huge network of suppliers, partners and other stakeholders, like a domino effect in the whole supply chain.
The students were interested besides professional knowledge on the environment in knowing what Easaw's worklife balance was like in Amazon. A 15 hr workday for 4 days and 3 days of recuperation weekly is indeed exciting for an executive.
Since the facility was one of the largest Amazon fulfilment centres in UK, part of the middle mile logistics network, the scale of operations was huge. Easaw carefully avoided going into the nitty gritty of daily Operations, he was strongly stressing throughout the interaction on Amazon's need for energy in big scale, especially in their cloud services. He proudly was mentioning how Amazon globally is on the right path to getting 100 % powered by renewable energy (net-zero energy Carbon footprint) by 2025.
Amazon is also committed to all its facilities across the world going net-zero in terms of Carbon emissions by 2040, a full ten years ahead of countries themselves going net zero emissions, as promised in the Paris Conference Meeting of 2015.
The interaction ended in a very positive note, the students were motivated enough to understand the positive effects of environmental Sustainability initiatives of global corporations and countries. The fears and apprehensions of the national association of local retailers in India protesting the meeting of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos with Indian PM Narendra Modi in New Delhi in early 2020, which finally did not materialise also figured in the interaction.
Overall, in brief the learning for the students from this interaction was very good and beneficial. They got to see Amazon from the eyes of not just a customer, but also through the eyes of an employee.
George..
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