Amazon’s latest paper packaging development sounds simple.

Make kraft paper stretchier.

Use it instead of plastic.

Recycle it with ordinary household paper.

At e-commerce scale, however, the problem is considerably more complicated.

Plastic film became deeply embedded in automated fulfilment because it combines properties that packaging machinery likes: flexibility, toughness, low weight, easy sealing and an ability to conform around products without tearing.

Conventional kraft paper behaves differently.

It can be strong in tension while still failing when a machine folds, pulls or forms it rapidly around an irregular object.

That is the problem Amazon is trying to solve with extensible paper, a kraft-based material that the company says can stretch approximately 5% to 7% before breaking—roughly two to three times the stretch of conventional kraft paper used in comparable applications.

Amazon has now expanded the material into North American e-commerce packaging after using similar technology in Europe since 2021.

The development is being presented primarily as another step in Amazon’s move away from single-use plastic.

For the paper and packaging industry, however, the more interesting lesson is different.

Replacing plastic at industrial scale is not primarily a material-substitution problem. It is a machinery, strength and damage-prevention problem.

Paper only wins if it can survive the equipment and logistics system that plastic was selected for in the first place.

Amazon did not invent extensible paper

The first distinction is important.

Stretchable kraft paper is not a new material category created by Amazon.

Extensible and semi-extensible sack kraft grades have been used for decades in demanding industrial bags for products including cement, chemicals, food ingredients and animal feed.

Those applications need paper capable of absorbing sudden mechanical loads without bursting when heavy products enter the bag.

Commercial suppliers still market extensible sack kraft around properties such as high tensile-energy absorption, toughness and reliable performance on high-speed converting and filling equipment. Mondi, for example, describes its semi-extensible sack kraft range as combining strength with high-speed convertibility, while Ahlstrom lists extensible papers with typical stretch levels of around 6% to 8%.

What Amazon has done is apply that general material concept to a very different industrial environment.

A cement sack needs to survive filling and distribution.

An Amazon mailer has to survive:

automated forming,

product insertion,

heat sealing,

conveyors,

sorting,

warehouse handling,

trucks,

air transport in some cases,

final-mile delivery,

and repeated drops and impacts.

The innovation is therefore less about discovering that paper can stretch and more about engineering extensible paper into a highly automated parcel network.

Stretch matters because paper fails differently from plastic

This explains why 5% to 7% elongation matters more than the number initially suggests.

Packaging engineers do not evaluate paper strength through tensile strength alone.

Energy absorption matters.

A paper can have high tensile strength yet fail abruptly if it has insufficient stretch.

Extensible sack kraft works because it combines strength with greater ability to deform before rupture.

That additional deformation allows the sheet to absorb energy when subjected to shocks or localized stress.

This is particularly useful in e-commerce.

A mailer rarely contains a perfectly flat rectangular product.

An irregular object pushes against specific areas of the package.

Sharp corners generate concentrated stress.

Packages bend around neighbouring parcels.

Products move inside the bag.

A material with almost no tolerance for deformation can tear even if its laboratory tensile strength appears adequate.

Stretch gives the paper more room to accommodate those forces.

That is why Amazon’s material development should be viewed partly through the same engineering lens as industrial sack kraft.

The important property is not simply stronger paper. It is paper that can absorb more abuse before it fails.

The packaging machine may be the real breakthrough

There is another reason the material matters.

Amazon already had automated equipment capable of producing lightweight plastic delivery bags.

Throwing those machines away and replacing them with entirely new systems would have made plastic elimination much more expensive.

Instead, Amazon’s engineers have been retrofitting automated packing equipment so that machines previously handling plastic can produce made-to-fit paper bags.

The company says its engineers had to combine the new paper with machinery modifications and heat-sealing technology to make the transition work.

Its first highly automated U.S. fulfilment centre to eliminate plastic delivery packaging, in Euclid, Ohio, demonstrated the approach in 2023. Amazon said the paper developed for the system was flexible, more weather resistant than conventional paper and heat sealable while still designed for curbside paper recycling.

That machinery story may ultimately be more important to packaging converters than the paper formulation.

Material substitution often fails because the new material is evaluated independently from the equipment processing it.

A flexible film may run at one tension.

Paper needs another.

A plastic bag tolerates deformation during sealing.

Paper behaves differently.

Folding characteristics change.

Web breaks matter.

Sensor settings matter.

Temperature matters.

The sealing interface changes.

The new package therefore has to be developed together with the machine.

Amazon’s transition demonstrates a broader principle for sustainable packaging:

If the material changes but the manufacturing system cannot process it economically, the substitution is not scalable.

Amazon has already reached hundreds of millions of packages

The importance of that machine compatibility becomes apparent in Amazon’s 2025 figures.

The company says retrofitted automated packing machines allowed it to avoid more than 288 million single-use plastic bags in North America during 2025, up from 134 million the previous year.

Amazon also reports that updated versions of its automated packaging technology can handle larger products, increasing by approximately 20% the range of products that can be packed into paper bags. New sensors measure the product and produce a more closely fitted package rather than using one standardized bag size.

That is where the engineering begins to change packaging economics.

If a paper package requires manual packing while the plastic alternative runs automatically, plastic retains a powerful labour and throughput advantage.

If both materials can run through automated equipment, the comparison changes.

At Amazon’s scale, even seconds of additional pack time matter.

So do web breaks.

So does machine downtime.

So does the amount of paper consumed per order.

For paper packaging suppliers hoping to displace flexible plastic, runnability may be as commercially important as recyclability.

But Amazon’s broader strategy is not actually “replace plastic with paper”

There is a more important point hidden underneath the extensible-paper story.

The best alternative to a plastic shipping bag is not always a paper shipping bag.

Sometimes it is no additional shipping package at all.

Amazon’s Ships in Product Packaging program attempts to certify products that can travel through its fulfilment network using the manufacturer’s existing package rather than receiving another Amazon box or mailer.

In 2025, Amazon says 11% of packages globally shipped without additional Amazon packaging, while 28 million unique products were certified for the program. Since 2020, 7.9 billion shipments in North America and Europe have been sent without additional Amazon packaging.

From a material-efficiency perspective, that hierarchy matters.

There are essentially three possible interventions:

Avoid the package.

If the manufacturer’s existing packaging can survive e-commerce distribution, do not add another layer.

Reduce the package.

If additional protection is required, use a right-sized bag, mailer or corrugated package with as little empty space as practical.

Substitute the material.

Where a shipping bag remains necessary, move from difficult-to-recycle plastic film toward a paper alternative where performance allows.

That is a more sophisticated packaging strategy than simply replacing every plastic bag with paper.

And it avoids one of the biggest weaknesses of material-substitution narratives:

a supposedly preferable material can still create unnecessary waste if the package itself was unnecessary.

Right-sizing changes the environmental equation again

The automated paper bag also illustrates why package geometry matters.

A corrugated box can be recyclable and renewable while still being excessive for a small soft product.

It may require substantially more material than a lightweight mailer.

It also creates empty volume that occupies space in carts, trailers and delivery vehicles.

Amazon says lightweight bags and envelopes used in its network can be up to 90% lighter than comparably sized rigid corrugated boxes. In North America and Europe, more than half of its 2025 shipments used lightweight packaging such as bags or envelopes.

That does not mean paper bags should replace boxes indiscriminately.

Fragile products need more protection.

Heavy products need strength.

Multiple-item orders can require a more rigid structure.

But it demonstrates why “paper versus plastic” is too narrow a sustainability question.

The complete comparison includes:

material mass,

package dimensions,

product protection,

transport efficiency,

automation,

recyclability,

and damage rate.

A highly recyclable package that uses four times more material than necessary is not automatically the better design.

Damage prevention is the non-negotiable variable

This may be the most important reason Amazon subjects the paper bags to extensive logistics testing.

According to the company, test packages go through a simulated fulfilment journey including 17 drops and two shaking sequences over approximately 90 minutes.

The protocol is intended to recreate stresses encountered from warehouse handling through transportation and final delivery.

That testing matters because a failed package can erase the benefit from saving a relatively small amount of packaging material.

A damaged consumer product may require:

replacement inventory,

another fulfilment cycle,

another package,

additional transportation,

return handling,

and potentially disposal of the original item.

For high-value or resource-intensive products, the environmental impact of the product itself can be much greater than the impact of its shipping bag.

This is why Amazon’s emphasis on product protection should not be dismissed as a conventional logistics concern.

It is part of the sustainability equation.

The lightest possible package is not necessarily the lowest-impact package if it fails more often.

This is also why paper needs weather resistance

Paper faces another challenge plastic largely avoids.

Water.

A delivery package can encounter rain on a loading dock.

Humidity during storage.

Wet vehicle floors.

Snow.

A parcel left on a doorstep.

Ordinary kraft loses mechanical performance as it absorbs moisture.

Amazon’s earlier description of its paper-mailer program therefore specifically noted that the material was engineered to be more weather resistant than ordinary paper as well as heat sealable.

That raises another interesting technical issue for the paper industry.

Making paper behave more like plastic usually requires more than fibre engineering.

Surface treatment and sealing chemistry become important.

A paper substrate may need sufficient moisture resistance without becoming difficult to repulp.

It may need a heat-sealable surface without creating an incompatible plastic layer.

It may need enough barrier performance to survive logistics while still being accepted in household paper recycling.

Amazon says it tested all elements of its paper packaging to ensure the finished structure remained curbside recyclable.

For paper manufacturers and coating suppliers, that balance could become a much larger market opportunity.

“Curbside recyclable” is not the same as “recycled”

This distinction should also remain clear.

Amazon says that 73% of its North American shipments in 2025 used packaging recyclable through household waste streams, up from 63% in 2024.

That is a packaging-design and infrastructure-access measure.

It is not evidence that 73% of Amazon delivery packaging was actually collected and recycled.

The package still has to:

reach an appropriate collection system,

be placed in the correct bin,

survive contamination,

be sorted,

reach a paper mill,

and become usable recovered fibre.

Actual recycling outcomes vary by municipality and material recovery system.

That does not make the move toward household-recyclable paper meaningless.

Accessibility matters enormously.

A material that can enter a widely available curbside system has a lower participation barrier than plastic films that frequently require store drop-off or specialized collection.

But professional packaging reporting should distinguish recyclability from recycling rate.

Amazon’s figure tells us what the package is designed to be compatible with.

It does not tell us exactly how many paper mailers become new paper.

The paper industry should pay attention to where this technology came from

There is an interesting industrial migration happening here.

Extensible kraft historically belonged largely to heavy-duty sacks.

Now the same general performance concept is entering lightweight parcel packaging.

That could create a different demand profile for kraft-paper producers.

Traditional sack kraft prioritizes properties such as:

high tensile-energy absorption,

burst resistance,

porosity,

and reliable high-speed filling.

E-commerce needs:

stretch,

puncture resistance,

tear resistance,

weather tolerance,

heat sealability,

printability,

low basis weight,

and extremely high converting reliability.

Those specifications are related but not identical.

Mondi’s recent development of smoother semi-extensible kraft grades for coating and heat-sealable packaging applications shows that paper suppliers are already moving extensible technology beyond conventional industrial sacks.

E-commerce could accelerate that development.

The opportunity may be particularly attractive for mills capable of producing high-strength paper at lower grammage.

A stronger sheet that allows the converter to remove several grams from every package can create more value than simply selling a heavier sheet with higher strength.

At hundreds of millions of packages, grammage becomes economics.

Amazon’s scale turns paper-machine properties into logistics variables

This is perhaps the most unusual aspect of the story.

A few percentage points of paper elongation sounds like a mill specification.

Inside Amazon’s network it can influence:

how many products qualify for paper mailers,

how often packaging machines stop,

how tightly packages fit products,

how many bags tear,

how much empty space travels through the network,

how many parcels fit into a vehicle,

and potentially how many plastic bags are required.

A paper property therefore moves all the way from the paper machine into logistics economics.

That is a useful lesson for pulp and paper producers trying to develop specialty packaging grades.

Customers increasingly do not buy paper primarily because they want paper.

They buy a measurable outcome.

Higher packing speed.

Lower material weight.

Fewer failures.

Better recyclability.

Smaller parcels.

Less plastic.

The value of a specialty paper lies in what it allows the customer’s system to do.

288 million avoided plastic bags is significant—but it needs context

Amazon’s reported scale deserves attention.

Its automated systems avoided 288 million plastic bags in North America during 2025.

The share of North American shipments containing single-use plastic delivery packaging also declined from 37% in 2024 to 27% in 2025.

That is a ten-percentage-point decline in one year.

But the remaining 27% also demonstrates that paper has not replaced plastic everywhere.

There are good reasons for that.

Some products require different protection.

Some fulfilment centres have not yet fully transitioned.

Cold or frozen products can require specialized formats.

Certain packaging functions remain technically harder to reproduce with fibre.

Amazon’s own previous sustainability reporting acknowledged that heavier and more demanding products can be difficult to convert to fully recyclable paper solutions.

The remaining plastic applications may therefore be more difficult than those already converted.

This is a common pattern in packaging transitions.

The first 70% can be easier than the final 30%.

The 5.4-million-ton figure should also remain attributed

Amazon reports that it has avoided 5.4 million metric tons of packaging material in North America and Europe since 2015.

That is a large cumulative figure.

But “avoided” is important.

It represents Amazon’s calculation of material that would otherwise have been used as packaging rather than 5.4 million tonnes of physical packaging collected from the waste stream.

The number includes multiple initiatives over more than a decade:

lighter packaging,

right-sizing,

shipping in product packaging,

plastic reduction,

and other packaging optimization.

It therefore should not be attributed solely to extensible paper.

The new paper is one element inside a much broader packaging-efficiency program.

That context makes the number more credible rather than less impressive.

Plastic-to-paper substitution still has trade-offs

There is another reason not to treat the transition as automatically environmentally superior in every circumstance.

Plastic film has significant material-efficiency advantages.

It is extremely light.

It provides good moisture resistance.

It uses relatively little raw material.

Replacing a thin plastic mailer with paper may increase package mass even if the paper has a stronger recycling route.

Paper production also consumes fibre, energy and water.

Transportation effects depend on weight and dimensions.

The correct environmental comparison therefore requires more than recycling rates.

Amazon’s strategy partly addresses this by combining paper substitution with right-sizing and packaging elimination rather than relying on material replacement alone.

But application-specific life-cycle assessment remains important.

The responsible claim is not:

paper is always environmentally better than plastic.

It is:

paper can offer an easier household recycling route when the structure is designed correctly, while material efficiency and product protection still have to be considered.

That is a much stronger engineering position.

The biggest innovation may be compatibility, not material science

Amazon calls the material a stronger, stretchier paper.

For the paper industry, its chemistry and mechanical properties are interesting.

For e-commerce, however, the real breakthrough may be compatibility.

Compatible with automated equipment.

Compatible with heat sealing.

Compatible with irregular products.

Compatible with logistics abuse.

Compatible with household recycling.

A paper grade that delivers only four of those five may not scale.

This is why sustainable packaging innovation increasingly happens at the intersection of materials and machinery.

The material supplier cannot solve the problem alone.

Neither can the equipment maker.

Neither can the retailer.

The paper, surface treatment, sealing system, packaging machine, product-selection algorithm and logistics test all have to work together.

That systems approach is what allows an established industrial material like extensible kraft to enter an entirely new market at enormous scale.

Amazon is showing paper producers what the customer increasingly wants

Paper mills have historically sold grades.

Kraft.

Sack kraft.

Containerboard.

Coated paper.

Specialty paper.

Large packaging users increasingly think differently.

They need functions.

A material capable of stretching 5% to 7% is useful because it enables an automated paper bag.

An automated paper bag is useful because it can replace certain plastic shipments.

Right-sized packaging is useful because it reduces material and vehicle volume.

Curbside compatibility is useful because it makes disposal easier for customers.

Amazon’s paper strategy therefore creates a chain:

paper property → machine performance → package performance → logistics efficiency → waste outcome.

That may be the most useful lesson for paper producers.

The winning grade is not necessarily the strongest paper or the lightest paper.

It is the paper that creates the best performance across that entire chain.

The next challenge is the applications paper still cannot handle

Amazon has already converted hundreds of millions of packages.

The harder work may be what remains.

The final plastic applications are likely to include products where paper faces more demanding combinations of:

moisture,

weight,

puncture,

shape,

sealing,

and handling requirements.

That is where the next generation of paper development will have to focus.

Higher stretch.

Better wet strength.

Lower grammage.

Improved coatings.

More effective fibre-based cushioning.

Heat-sealable repulpable surfaces.

Faster automated converting.

At the same time, those additional functional treatments cannot be allowed to turn a theoretically simple paper mailer into another complex package that recycling mills struggle to process.

The technical objective is therefore becoming increasingly precise:

make paper behave more like plastic during use without making it behave like plastic in the recycling mill.

That is a difficult materials problem.

And the best package may still be no package

The extensible-paper story is useful because Amazon’s scale makes small changes visible.

But it should not distract from the most efficient part of the company’s packaging strategy.

In 2025, 11% of packages globally required no additional Amazon packaging.

There is no coating chemistry to optimize on packaging that does not exist.

No mailer to manufacture.

No shipping material to transport.

No secondary package for the consumer to recycle.

That is why Amazon’s strategy should be understood as more than a paper substitution program.

The real hierarchy is:

eliminate,

reduce,

then substitute.

Extensible paper matters because it expands the range of products for which the third option becomes technically possible.

Its success will not ultimately be measured by how unusual it feels when stretched by hand.

It will be measured by whether millions more products can travel through automated fulfilment using less difficult-to-recycle material without increasing damage, slowing the packing line or creating another end-of-life problem.

That is what turns a 5% to 7% change in paper elongation into something strategically important.

For the pulp and paper industry, it also sends a clear signal.

The next growth opportunity for paper packaging may not come from making paper merely more sustainable-looking.

It will come from engineering paper to perform jobs that previously belonged to plastic.

Last Updated on 15/09/2026 by Jota Machinery