Amazon Web Service Helps Big Meat Eat The Amazon Rainforest: Amazon Cloud’s Toxic Clients
A new report, Amazon’s Toxic Web Services, provides expert analysis exposing how the world’s largest cloud provider, Amazon Web Services is powering fossil fuel expansion, deforestation, human rights violations and autonomous weapons systems.
AWS is used by millions of businesses globally, yet unlike banks or pension funds with comparable influence, it operates in an ethical vacuum despite its unethical clients, as Amazon’s Toxic Web Services from Greenpeace Germany shows.
The main findings from Amazon’s Toxic Web Services include:
- AWS actively supports Shell’s exploration for new underwater oil and gas fields with AI model and computing power, directly contradicting the Paris Agreement
- AWS serves greenwashing beef company JBS, a major source of methane and driver of deforestation of the Amazon rainforest
- AWS has business relationships with at least 100 companies flagged on global ethical and environmental exclusion lists and 55% of companies rated “high concern” for autonomous weapons by the Dutch human rights organization PAX.
Sanna Ghotbi, Global Tech Campaigner for Greenpeace International, said:
“Amazon is a clear‑cut example of big tech’s overreach, concentrating unprecedented power, wealth and influence at the expense of people’s rights, climate, biodiversity and peace. As we have seen in Europe and now in China, Donald Trump is acting as a personal lobbyist for this sector, using tariffs and open threats to bully states’ digital sovereignty. It is time to put an end to Big Tech’s impunity and to make sure that tech is serving the public good.”
The report authors are demanding AWS restrict services for fossil fuel expansion and autonomous weapons, establish an independent ethics council and protect employees who refuse unethical work.
