According to a Consumer Reports new investigation, Amazon is rapidly expanding its warehouse empire. Most of these warehouses are being built in neighborhoods of color..This ultimately leads to Black and Brown communities being burdened by the truck traffic, noise and pollution that warehouses create.
Consumer Reports estimates that nearly 70 percent of Amazon warehouses in America are located in neighborhoods with a higher number of residents of colour than other areas in the metro area. A fifth of the Amazon warehouses are located in areas with more low-income residents. Consumer Reports compared data from the Environmental Protection Agency, US Census Bureau and a database of Amazon facilities it purchased from a logistics consulting company to find out this.
Consumer Reports was told by Jos Acosta Crdova, an organizer at Little Village Environmental Justice Organization in Chicago, that our communities are being sacrificed for economic development.
E-commerce is responsible largely for the growth of larger warehouses. Amazon is the leading online retailer. They require huge warehouses to store and distribute their goods. According to commercial real estate firm, $1 billion in online retail sales would translate to 1.25 Million Square Feet of warehouse space requirement. CBRE. Warehouses are now the most commonly used commercial building in the US, surpassing offices.
Amazon has made a lot of money during the pandemic, and has dramatically increased the number warehouses it owns to keep up. Consumer Reports discovered that Amazon opened almost 300 new facilities in 2020 compared to the average 75 each year over the five previous years. Amazon’s warehouse footprint is larger than that of other retailers. Its new additions in 2020 are already twice as large as all of Walmart’s warehouse space. Amazon did not immediately comment. The Verge.
The most adverse effects of the warehouse boom will be felt by the Black, Brown, and Low-Income communities that are going up. The worst smog is in the Inland Empire, once a quiet community at the edge of Southern California’s deserts, which has become a warehouse hotspot. According to the American Lung Association. It’s not an anomaly: Research has shown that areas with warehouses in California have significantly more air pollution than those without them. Poor air quality is associated with a a slew of health issuesCommunity members who are less able to afford high-quality health care, such as heart attacks and asthma, are more at risk.
If the Consumer Reports investigation is any indication, the problem will only get worse before getting better. Read the Full story here.
