James Riley, Amazon Loss Prevention Specialist, is being nominated for the Retail Risk Sustainability Award. This is in recognition of James’ outstanding achievements and unwavering commitment to excellence in building a more sustainable future.
An idea turned into reality, as Loss Prevention Specialist and Amazon Sustainability Ambassador, James Riley, spearheaded an initiative to utilize broken pallet containers to construct garden planters for herbs and vegetables. While strolling past local Melbourne cafes and admiring their greenery, James couldn’t help but notice that their planter boxes look just like the pallets at Amazon. Being based at an Amazon Sort Centre in Melbourne, James’ sees his fair share of broken pallets, which are typically sent for recycling. What if these broken pallets can be repurposed into planters, the budding gardener James thought. Fast forward five months and James’ idea is bearing fruit. Leaning into the Amazon leadership principles such as “Think Big” and “Bias for Action”, James successfully constructed wooden planters from discarded and broken Amazon pallets, layering them with mulch, pine bark and soil, atop of recycled Amazon cardboard bases. The recycled planter boxes James built onsite, are currently growing fruit and vegetable so that Associates can pick after work, either eating them while there or taking them home for dinner. This has bought the Amazon community closer and sparked a wider conversation on growing food. Through this project, Associates can share their knowledge with one another, so that even those new to gardening will have the confidence to try it at home, and perhaps, become more conscious of their sustainability impact. In addition to this, James is also currently working to explore how to transform organic break room waste in compost for these newly built garden planter boxes.
Along with this initiative, James has also partnered with the Merri Creek Management Committee (MCMC) Ecological Restoration Team who manage and restore native vegetation along Merri Creek and tributaries in Melbourne’s north. James has represented both Amazon and the Australian Loss Prevention team, by volunteering to help plant and maintain trees with this committee.
Lastly, as his sites Sustainability Ambassador, James has been instrumental in the success of his building being certified as a Zero Carbon building by the International Living Future Institute (ILFI). This makes James’ building the largest ILFI certified project in Australia, the first Zero Carbon certified (ZCC) warehouse, logistics or fulfillment building in Australia and the first Amazon project outside of the USA to earn ZCC. This includes a 1.3 MV Rooftop Solar System with 3078 panels, generating up to 100% of the sites energy needs during daylight, 12 Electric Vehicle (EV) charging stations with capacity for up to 30, a rainwater recycling system connecting to toilets and irrigation, water efficient sanitary fixtures and fittings to reduce mains water consumption.
James’ leadership, expertise and commitment to excellence has driven not only measurable success as mentioned above, but inspired those around him. It is because of this, that James Riley, Loss Prevention Specialist and Amazon Sustainability Ambassador, is an exemplary candidate for the Retail Risk Sustainability Award.