Amazon’s French expansion is the target of green activists

Environmental activists unload giant delivery box at finance ministry in statement about the consequences of e-commerce

Climate activists target Amazon in a protest outside the French finance ministry. Reuters

Environmental campaigners have sent a mock 3.6 metre tall “Stop Amazon” delivery box to the French government, demanding that it reins in the company’s expansion plans.

The activists arrived on Wednesday in a rented van – much like millions of Amazon’s daily deliveries – at the French finance ministry where they built their protest box in the street.

They unloaded wooden panels and built them up into a box decorated with the Amazon logo and the slogan: "#StopAmazon".

Activists then spray-painted: "Amazon: the state must say stop" on the pavement in front of the finance ministry, where they said Amazon’s culture of consumption hurts the environment and squeezes out small businesses.

"We put this parcel in front of the ministry to challenge the government about the dangers of the expansion of e-commerce in France," said Alma Dufour, a campaigner with the French chapter of green group Friends of the Earth.

Amazon said in a statement that it believed e-commerce was less harmful to the environment than traditional retail and that it was committed to reaching the threshold of net zero carbon for all its businesses by 2040.

It said it had created more than 30,000 direct and indirect jobs in France in the past 20 years including at small businesses, which trade on the Amazon platform.

In April Amazon closed six warehouses for five weeks after a French court ruled it could sell only essential items during the lockdown. The court case began as a union case alleging workers could not social distance.

Last year, several hundred environmental activists protested outside Amazon’s headquarters in Paris and at two of its regional distribution centres in France as part of stepped-up climate change demonstrations.

The protest drew support from groups including Friends of the Earth and the Gilets Jaunes, who demonstrated for months against polices of President Emmanuel Macron.