Green Group ‘Lead Filer’ of E-Waste Shareholder Proposal at Amazon’s Next Annual Meeting

The green group As You Sow lists itself as the “lead filer” of an Amazon shareholder proposal asking the Amazon board for a report on the company’s e-waste recycling practices, the group said in its annual Proxy Preview 2016, published Tuesday. The e-waste proposal at Amazon is one of 314 “pending shareholder resolutions” against dozens of companies across a spectrum of issues, including the environment, political activity, human and labor rights, and employee diversity, the report said. The As You Sow proposal at Amazon seeks a corporate accounting “on the company’s policy options to reduce potential pollution and public health problems from electronic waste generated as a result of its sales to consumers, and to increase the safe recycling of such wastes,” the report said. Amazon challenged the proposal at the SEC and wants the proposal struck from the agenda of its next annual meeting, “arguing it concerns ordinary business since it relates to the recycling of customers’ waste, not its own, and thus is a matter of customer relations, and that it is moot since the company already offers e-waste recycling options,” As You Sow said. Amazon hasn’t yet filed even preliminary proxy statements at the SEC but customarily has done so in April for annual meetings it typically holds in mid-June in Seattle. Amazon representatives didn’t comment. As for its e-waste recycling practices, Amazon “supports the responsible disposal and recycling of electronics products,” the company says on its environmental page. But Amazon doesn’t run an e-waste take-back program of its own, offering links to about two dozen nationally and state-based e-waste programs.