Amazon Could Follow in Order to Be

¶ … Amazon could follow in order to be socially responsible in marketing its Kindle fire family of tablets. This demand for such social responsibility has been coming for sometime for the secretive Amazon to reveal long-awaited information about its environmental compliance in the case of the new Kindle tablet. Amazon has long been seemingly more secret than that CIA about facets of the company and the Kindle has been no exception to this rule. Requests for this information have been repeatedly denied requests for information about the Kindle.

Examples of this included an attempt by Joe Hutsko of the New York Times who tried to learn more Kindle's carbon footprint and reported that "phone calls and e-mail messages to Amazon inquiring about the materials in the popular Kindle device have thus far gone unanswered (Godelnik, 2011)." Also, Emma Ritch of the Cleantech Group wrote that "Amazon declined to provide information about its manufacturing process or carbon footprint ibid." In his article on this, Raz Godelnik speculates that this does not reflect any ill will on the company's part, but just that they do not believe that their company's products, including Kindle, do not have harmful environmental impacts and therefore do not gather data to disseminate (ibid.).

This is evidenced by the fact that it publishes information about the environmental habits of its customers and brags about the Kindle's elimination of print books made of paper, saving trees in the process (ibid.). Godelnik speculates that this such pressure for this has to come from various stakeholders such as customers and shareholders, which would mesh with Amazon's historical commitment to give the customer and shareholders what they want (ibid.). However, others have openly accused Amazon of dodging environmental questions and inquiries.

Outside of Kindle, this controversy has been going on for the company since at least 2009 when it was noted that it was up there with McDonald's which also does not reveal its environmental impact ("Google, mcdonalds and," 2009). This has led other journalists to be less generous that Godelnik was above. While the company claims that it is being environmentally proactive, they why not spill the beans? Indeed, Amazon actually lobbied its shareholders at a meeting not give in to demands for pollution disclosure.

Pressures on the shareholders have not worked and McMillan speculates it is because of the secretive business model that the company is wed to (McMillan, 2011). This is also echoed in a Guardian article on the subject (Kaye, 2011). The Solution is in the Shareholders Meeting Obviously, Jeff Bezos has always enjoyed the trust of the shareholders. His expertise has guided the company to profitability over the country's history and he has not let consumers or shareholders down.

With this knowledge, he keeps guiding his company where is customers want to go, betting that the customer is always right (Amazon.com, Inc. 2011). Certainly, until customers demand social responsibility disclosure and it hits the bottomline, it will not happen. Increased pressure on shareholders would likely do this as well. Once this is done, then pressure could be placed for the company to declare its policies on e-waste, certainly the biggest issue that computer and hardware distributors have.

The company's e-waste recycling program for the Kindle and its rechargeable batteries works (Lamonica, 2009). Therefore, it would do well for customers to put pressure on the company to encourage Amazon to share this corporate network with its affiliated company that could use the company's huge logistics networks to jump start their own recycling programs. Conclusion In this short essay, the author detailed specific suggestions that Amazon could follow in order to be socially responsible in marketing its Kindle fire family of.