How Coach and Amazon put an internal value on reuse and recycling

This is corporate sustainability news about Coach and Amazon, not something tied to home energy upgrades or rebates. It has no direct bearing on your house, but here's what happened.

Coach and Amazon are both finding ways to make reuse and recycling pay off internally, using different pitches to convince their own leadership teams. At Coach, sustainability director Kim Matsoukas focuses on designing bags and accessories that can be taken apart easily, so materials get reused, and turning leftover scrap leather into new products. The company's resale arm, Coach (Re)Loved, sold more than 13,800 repaired, restored, and vintage items in 2025, and Matsoukas says that business has held up despite U.S. import tariffs because resale items aren't subject to them. A related effort, Coachtopia, launched a collection made from scrap materials from two popular bag styles, with a carbon footprint 59 percent lower than similar new products.

Amazon takes a different angle, treating waste as an operational flaw to fix rather than an environmental goal to chase. The company uses AI in warehouses to catch damaged products before shipping, cutting damaged items by 21 percent in 2025. It also replaced disposable wooden pallets used to move goods internally with reusable plastic ones, avoiding the need to source 85 million wood pallets in 2024 and 35 million more in 2025, while also cutting down on single-use plastic wrap. Amazon's team says highlighting the cost savings, not just the environmental benefit, has been key to getting the program adopted.