Time bomb? Uncover the secrets behind the AmazonBasics battery

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A fresh set of Amazon batteries sitting on the kitchen counter exploded with a bang, followed by a black, grainy substance that began to spew intermittently.

I was stunned…

This unassuming little thing is one of the most popular “own-label” products sold under Amazon’s own-brand AmazonBasics. With nearly 20,000 customer reviews, the product’s popularity dwarfs most of AmazonBasics’ other products, which include electronics, household goods and bits and pieces.

The battery also gets a high rating — so did I just buy a defective one? I scoured the alkaline battery’s review page for the word “explosion” and found dozens similar to what I experienced today. Someone said the battery in his wife’s breast pump blew. There were also people whose toys and appliances were damaged by the battery fluid.

Some customers have blamed so-called Chinese manufacturing, but Amazon is vague in product descriptions, claiming they are “made in Indonesia using Japanese technology”.

Over the past month, I’ve tried to uncover the potential life cycle of this AmazonBasics battery. Amazon’s supply chain is hard to unravel because it is secretive about the scope of its business and masks its operations with a discreet network of outsourcing. So does its AA battery. I learned that the product was indeed made in Indonesia, not Amazon. The company buys batteries from a supplier and repackages them as its own, just like Traderjoe’s and its namesake food brand.

Amazon has never voluntarily revealed the provenance of AmazonBasics products, but it has confirmed foreign media reports about the provenance of its AA batteries.

Faster and cheaper delivery comes at a human and environmental cost

Although I discovered the origin of the battery, I was unable to find the source of its materials. The difficulty of exploring even a simple component’s supply chain suggests that Amazon’s operations are deliberately hidden in a black box. This secrecy makes the commercial giant unmatched in its ability to offer cheaper goods faster than rivals. It also makes it harder for consumers who have doubts about whether their purchases are ethical or sustainable. In addition to blurring why a product might be defective — or in my case an explosion — it also hinders those of us who just want to know “Where did it all begin?” people

In a white building on the Indonesian island of West Java, workers meticulously assemble batteries for Fujitsu.

Fujitsu, a Tokyo-based tech company, is the secret supplier of AmazonBasics. Amazon’s distribution centers typically have black and orange logos, but from the outside of the building alone, there’s no sign that any of the AmazonBasics hits were made there.

Technically, Fujitsu’s subsidiary FDK operates the alkaline battery plant. You can find it in the West Java city of Bekasi, one of Indonesia’s most vibrant industrial centers. I had come across a review of AmazonBasics batteries that mentioned they appeared to be “made by Fujitsu,” but didn’t elaborate, so I decided to call the subsidiary.

An FDK employee confirmed that AmazonBasics is an authorized distributor of its batteries, and that AmazonBasics must purchase at least $100,000 of products from FDK each year under the agreement.

Amazon later confirmed that FDK was indeed one of the companies working with AmazonBasics.

Fujitsu is one of the oldest information technology companies in the world. It was founded in 1935 in pre-war Japan, and its roots lie in an industrial chaebol, or family monopoly. The company went on to create Japan’s first home-grown computer and now boasts a global retail empire of hardware, software and personal electronics. In 1989, FDK expanded to Indonesia, renamed FDK-Intercallin, and eventually opened a production plant there, becoming the only overseas manufacturer of Fujitsu alkaline batteries.

According to historians, Japan is credited with perfecting the recipe for modern batteries: a fine black powder called electrolytic manganese dioxide that helps the battery’s energy cycle.

“The Japanese have known for a long time how to make electrolytic manganese dioxide,” said JayTurner, a professor of environmental studies at Wellesley college. The manufacture of the product has always required pure manganese dioxide, a compound that is difficult to mine without impurities. “But during World War II, they figured out how to make a pure manganese dioxide that was better than the natural stuff.”

All the experts surveyed said Indonesia, with 264 million people, was not a big player in a battery industry long dominated by the likes of China, Japan and South Korea. Therefore, Amazon’s investment in southeast Asia is unique.

“If anything, Amazon should have more control over the AmazonBasics supply chain… It is a bit suspicious that they have not done so for so long.”

FDK declined to comment on the status of its Indonesian factories. Lax environmental standards may have been one reason for the site, since other factories in Bekaxi are responsible for carcinogenic air pollutants and rotting river waste. Fujitsu’s sustainability report showed that its operations in Indonesia were the dirtiest, ranking highest in terms of waste output. In 2016, the bekaxi plant produced 100 tons more waste than the second-ranked FDKEnergy.

“When it comes to environmental regulation in Indonesia, I would say that if there is, it is limited or not well enforced, so for a company like Fujitsu, the risk of manufacturing here is very low.” Says Alexis Bateman, director of the Sustainable Supply Chain Project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The project aims to encourage companies to adopt sustainable development strategies through research.

Indonesia has another benefit for battery makers: it holds valuable natural resources

Fujitsu declined to comment on the source of its battery material or whether it was exploiting Indonesia’s abundant manganese resources. There is zero public data on where the company gets its raw materials, leaving only an agreement that says it will not buy conflict minerals (tantalum, tin, gold, tungsten and cobalt) from suppliers that fund human rights violations. But battery analysts say that with dwindling resources, companies like Tesla and Apple could look to Indonesia because they need very different types of batteries. Tesla is in talks to build a battery factory in central Sulawesi; Indonesia, meanwhile, is imposing an export ban on nickel and copper, presumably to support its battery business.

But, thanks to the product sheet, we know Fujitsu’s batteries are made of manganese dioxide, graphite, zinc and potassium hydroxide. It may also contain paper, nylon, polyvinyl chloride and steel. It’s unclear how much, if any, of that material is recyclable.

“These materials are not toxic and pose no significant threat to human health, so they are not strictly regulated,” Turner said. Alkaline material is basically dirt refined in a cylinder.”

But their production has not been so smooth. Manganese has been linked to human rights violations, occupational safety and child Labour violations, according to RCSGlobal, a social responsibility consultancy. RCSGlobal notes that 76 per cent of manganese comes from South Africa, China, Australia and Gabon, but there is “little overall traceability” throughout the supply chain. In other words, even if manganese is likely to be mined in harsh conditions, it is difficult to determine whether a particular company is benefiting because manganese is handled by more than one middleman. (The same is true of other minerals.)

Concerned with the problem of labor abuses in nonprofits ResponsibleSourcingNetwork said, at present basically no measures to deal with manganese production risk. The zinc mining process has also been found to release harmful gases into the air, such as sulphur dioxide, which are harmful to human health.

An Amazon spokesperson said: “At Amazon we are absolutely committed to ensuring that the products and services we offer are produced in a way that respects human rights and the environment and protects the basic dignity of workers. We work with suppliers that implement the same principles and have strict standards in place for suppliers of goods and services to Amazon and its subsidiaries.”

The further down the supply chain batteries go, the harder they are to track. This is mainly due to U.S. shipping rules that allow companies to secretly ship products. As Amazon expands into all modes of delivery — cars, trucks, air and sea — its logistics are likely to become more invisible.

“Amazon is a business giant not because it offers something new, but because it controls logistics,” said jean-paul rodrigue, a professor at HofstraUniversity who studies transportation, logistics and freight distribution. . He added that commercial shipping is subject to private contracts and Amazon is under no obligation to disclose the information to anyone. Only for customs purposes can you see the ship’s manifest.

In 2015, the Greek container ship COSCOBeijing sailed out of Jakarta, Indonesia, with the AmazonBasics alkaline battery on 410 pallets. The batteries filled four containers and were shipped from bekaxi by PTFDK donesia with AmazonFulfillmentService as the recipient (or seller). The ship made brief stops in Malaysia and Singapore before crossing the Pacific Ocean to the port of Long Beach, California, and on to Seattle, Washington, where it unloaded cargo for an unknown destination.

The S&P global market intelligence company (S&PGlobalMarketIntelligence) supply chain research division of Panjiva, got the freight bill of lading. Panjiva buys commercial shipping data from THE U.S. Customs and Border Protection to provide its customers with global import and export information. The 2015 shipment was the only one Panjiva was able to find, possibly because while Amazon hid most shipping documents, this one was omitted.

The next leg of these batteries’ journey, from the warehouse to your doorstep, is more speculative. On the box I bought, “Imported by Importer” was written in Spanish with the address of Amazon’s Mexico City factory. Below, the address of Amazon’s Luxembourg factory is written in German.

Amazon has 75 distribution centers and 25 sorting centers in North America, and according to Curbed, its footprint is so large that it has an Amazon warehouse less than 20 miles away, the equivalent of half the U.S. population. Worldwide, Amazon has more than 175 fulfillment centers. The company also sends about 48 percent of its packages through its last-mile delivery service, AmazonLogistics. But unlike UPS or FedEx, which provide detailed tracking information, AmazonLogistics wipes out all data before items arrive at amazon’s site. For example, when I ordered a box of AmazonBasics batteries, my tracking number began with “TBA,” indicating that it was shipped through Amazon Logistics, and the earliest I could see was that it was shipped from an Amazon warehouse in Newark, Calif. Amazon acknowledges this, but won’t explain why it starts tracking logistics only after products leave the distribution center.

Faster and cheaper delivery always comes at the expense of people and the environment. Amazon has been accused of underpaying drivers as contract workers, monitoring their work and increasing their workload. In August, a BuzzFeed News report exposed amazon’s deadly conditions for next-day delivery drivers, which ended with Amazon refusing to take responsibility. Its freight emissions are also staggering; Amazon’s 2017 shipments are estimated to have generated 19 million tonnes of carbon, equivalent to the emissions of nearly five coal-fired power plants.

Consumers are most concerned about the end of the battery life cycle, battery use and final disposal

It is also a major concern for environmentalists because of the growing problem of e-waste in the technological age.

AA batteries account for nearly half of AmazonBasics sales and 46 percent of online purchases, according to 1010Data, a consumer transaction analytics company. On AmazonBasics, $1 out of every $10 spent is on batteries, and AA alkaline batteries account for about 4 percent of the brand’s total sales. This puts AmazonBasics in a leading position in the online AA battery market, ahead of brands we’re familiar with like Energizer and Panasonic.

“Amazon’s ability to aggressively market its in-house battery brands has helped it become the leader in online home battery sales, but national brands like Energizer and Duracell are also competing aggressively to maintain share,” said MattPace, senior director at 1010data. .

Although batteries are widely used today, some experts say their environmental impact is hidden and vastly underestimated. “The biggest responsibility lies not with the manufacturing plant itself, but with the extraction of raw materials upstream,” researchers from MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering wrote in a 2011 study on the life cycle of alkaline batteries. .

“Production facilities have the greatest impact at all stages of direct control in battery manufacturing,” the study notes. . Most of the energy produced by batteries in the United States comes from fossil fuels, and renewables account for only a small portion of those energy needs, the report added. Purchasing and processing together account for 88% of the environmental impact of a single battery use.

Using data from the MIT study, Turner co-authored a 2015 paper published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology that estimated that “the energy required to make an alkaline battery is more than 100 times the energy required to run a battery.” Add up all the emissions from batteries, including procurement, production and transportation, and they emit 30 times more greenhouse gases per watt-hour than the average coal-fired power plant.

To sum up: According to the study, appliances powered by alkaline batteries will consume more carbon than those plugged into an electrical outlet.

Still, the debate about the environmental impact of batteries has centered around scrapping, recycling and upcycling. Instead of voluntary or mandatory recycling, most states allow people to throw used batteries in the trash. (California is an exception, treating all batteries as hazardous waste, though the state provides only vague standards for how to dispose of them.) Although batteries are one of the largest sources of heavy metals in wastewater, there is no broad policy in the United States that classifies the various types of batteries as toxic or nontoxic, or regulates their disposal. As the MIT study notes, policy makers are currently divided on whether alkaline batteries are harmful when buried in landfills.

“The problem is that batteries are so small and widely distributed that it takes a lot of energy to collect and recycle them,” Turner said. When you do that, the energy you expend far exceeds the energy you save in the process.”

Fujitsu says consumers can reduce waste by replacing portable batteries with their “long-lasting” alkaline or rechargeable batteries. While Amazon claims to be working on its own waste loop, it doesn’t appear to be doing as much as other big-name battery sellers to encourage recycling. Currently only rechargeable batteries contain recycling information, but Amazon says its disposable batteries will soon do the same.

Compared with Amazon’s fossil fuel alliances, labor abuses and billions of dollars in military contracts, the battery’s impact may seem insignificant, but it matters at a time when Amazon claims to be doing better to combat climate change. In September, chief executive JeffBezos announced an ambitious “climate commitment” after thousands of employees demanded that his company adopt a climate action plan. It’s a major commitment that puts Amazon on track to achieve net zero emissions by 2040 and to rely entirely on renewable energy company-wide by 2030. But behind the promise is the fact that Amazon has only just begun tracking its carbon footprint. In 2018, the Amazon had a carbon footprint of 44.4 million metric tons, almost as much as the entire emissions of Switzerland or Denmark.

Amazon says the figure includes volume, its footprint is calculated according to industry standards and accounts for private label goods – but its reporting is too general, combining things as different as “business travel” and “Manufacturing of Amazon-branded products” under “emissions from indirect sources”. By consolidating these emissions, Amazon hides some of these numbers from the middle and downstream of outsourced manufacturing.

“If anything, Amazon should have greater control over its AmazonBasics supply chain,” Bateman said. But it’s a bit suspicious that they haven’t done it for so long, they’re not new.”

I never understood why my AmazonBasics battery exploded. An Amazon spokeswoman said the company had investigated the issue and even brought in third-party testing LABS to check the product’s internal design. “We thoroughly investigate such issues to ensure product safety,” he told me. . My unused batteries are still in the cupboard, covered in dust because I don’t know how to recycle them.

The day-to-day use of Amazon’s batteries belies its complexity — secret transactions around the world, which is exactly how Amazon wants it to be, and likely to remain, in the future.

“Why would Amazon want to show its supply chain to competitors?” asked Rodrigue. That’s their advantage.”

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