Amazon Dash: does the world really need more little pieces of plastic?

Amazon launched its Dash buttons in the UK and parts of Europe this week. For the price of £4.99 – redeemable from a first order – Amazon Prime subscribers will be able to summon refills of products from Play-Doh to Wilkinson Sword razor blades with a button press.

And, a blessing to those with RSI, smart dishwashers, water filters, washing machines and printers will be able to detect when products are running low and re-order for you, from the online retailer.

But filtered through the excitement of what the Internet of Things (IoT) – where devices are connected to automate tasks – could do for time-poor, shop-weary consumers, are criticisms that the last things we need are millions more little bits of plastic conjuring up bulky cardboard boxes from Amazon on our doorsteps.

“They are a wasteful use of technology and a surprising step backwards for a company that prides itself on its innovative abilities,” says Greenpeace’s Gary Cook from San Francisco (where the Dash launched last year).

“There is nothing particularly innovative about creating a disposable electronic device that locks the user into a particular brand of disposable products. Adding to the massive global e-waste problem with an electronic device that has such limited functionality is certainly not innovative.

Cook says technology like the Dash buttons could be part of a closed-loop system that helps get the container back to the manufacturer – for example, milk bottle back to dairy, ink cartridge back to HP – and help us to reuse and reduce waste. “This button would seem to be taking us in the opposite direction”, he says.

The buttons launched in the US last year priced at $4.99, and Amazon has said sales trebled in the last two months with more than 150 product types now on offer.

Raz Godelnik, assistant professor at Parsons School of Design in New York, who is researching the impact of the sharing economy on traditional business and cities, is critical of the impact of the buttons on our consumption.

“I think that IoT could be a force for good but [will] also increase unsustainable consumption,” he says. “Using smart buttons will make it easier to maintain the status quo and not change consumption habits, whether it’s about moving to a different brand or finding other ways to meet our needs, and since the status quo is mainly unsustainable, they’re probably not going to help us make the changes we need to make. Efficiency could be beneficial, but it all depends on the context and, in this one, I doubt if this is the case.”

The UK government’s waste reduction advisory body, Wrap – which raises awareness about the 15m tonnes of annual food waste, among other things – declined to comment on Amazon’s Dash, or similar products that are likely to be released in the future by manufacturers keen to tie us into their brands.

Meanwhile, Amazon defends the environmental credentials of its Dash buttons. Tarek El-Hawary, a senior spokesman, explained: “Amazon Dash buttons are fully recyclable and Amazon will cover the cost of recycling. Orders placed via Dash buttons are grouped together where possible, as with any order we fulfil ... Prime customers can also continue to order via the website or Amazon app if they wish.”

Given the limited range of 40 products currently linked to this Wi-Fi-connected device, however, you’ll still have to do your weekly shop. And if your city (like mine) does not welcome hundreds of thousands of cardboard boxes in the rubbish collection, and you don’t much enjoy stripping off endless bits of tape and wrestling with the blasted things to fold them up for recycling, Amazon Dash might not shake up your world just yet.