As Amazon holds its virtual Annual Meeting of Shareholders, Greenpeace Germany is exposing the systematic role of its cloud subsidiary Amazon Web Services (AWS), in supporting some of the world's most controversial companies such as Shell and Palantir. A new Greenpeace Germany study, Amazon's Toxic Web Services, reveals that the world's largest cloud provider acts as a critical technological backbone for climate chaos, human rights violations, or attacks on democratic institutions.
On May 20, 2026, Greenpeace Germany activists protested the reckless business practices of Amazon's cloud division at the Hamburg AWS Summit. The activists disrupted the event during a morning keynote by displaying a giant banner on stage bearing the message "Leave the Toxic Cloud".
Mauricio Vargas, economic policy expert in Greenpeace Germany, said: "Whether it is rainforest destruction, fossil fuel expansion or human rights violations, wherever there is money to be made, Amazon's cloud division looks the other way. AWS profits from companies that even mainstream financial investors refuse to touch on ethical grounds. A cloud built on this kind of business is not neutral infrastructure, it is complicity at industrial scale."
Greenpeace research reveals that the Amazon Cloud maintains business relationships with at least 38 percent of the companies flagged on global ethical and environmental exclusion lists. This includes Big Oil giant Shell, the Brazilian meat corporation JBS, the surveillance firm Palantir and the autonomous weapons systems specialist Anduril. Using exclusion criteria used by the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund and organisations like Urgewald and PAX, researchers identified that AWS provides infrastructure to at least 100 high-risk entities.[2][3][4][5]
The authors point to a glaring contradiction: while other sectors like finance and pharmaceuticals are bound by strict regulations and voluntary commitments, the Amazon Cloud and the wider Big Tech industry operate largely in an ethical vacuum, despite their immense systemic influence on society.
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."
In response, Greenpeace Germany has proposed a new framework of environmental and ethical minimum standards for cloud providers demanding that they:
1. Restrict services for fossil fuel expansion, lethal autonomous weapons, and unacceptable surveillance practices like social scoring or biometric scraping.
2. Ensure political integrity by ending the obstruction of tech and climate regulations.
3. Implement independent oversight via external ethics councils to review high-risk client relationships.
