Amazon has expanded its use of an “extensible” paper across automated packing lines in the US and Canada, DC Velocity reports.
It’s a bet that a stronger paper can match plastic’s grip on high-speed packing lines without slowing them down, the reason plastic displaced paper there in the first place.
The paper stretches 5-7% before tearing, two to three times more than standard kraft paper, so it molds around a package the way plastic does on machines built for it. Amazon has used it in Europe since 2021 and started deploying it at scale across North America in 2025.
Producer prices for paper bags are up 43% since January 2019, against 32% for plastic bags, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Automated packers avoided 288 million plastic bags across North America in 2025, Amazon says, and the share of North American shipments containing single-use plastic fell 28% year over year, to 27% from 37%. Amazon has already replaced 99.7% of mixed plastic-and-paper padded mailers in the US and Canada with paper versions, per its own sustainability reporting. “You see a lot more brown,” said John Sly, who leads Amazon’s materials science lab, of the packing lines.
More than half of Amazon’s North American fulfillment centers, 52%, shipped no plastic delivery packaging at all in 2025.
