On Amazon, You Could Buy An ‘Energy Drink’ Made Of Delivery Drivers’ Urine
Video screenshot via Channel 4 Documentaries
Amazon is a marketplace that’s got it all. Beginning as a shop that sold books, it now connects customers to just about everything under the sun… even the byproducts of employees who spend hours under its rays, it seems.
The company has long come under fire for working conditions that allegedly made it difficult for delivery drivers to take bathroom breaks. To relieve themselves, workers said they had to urinate in empty water bottles.
In a salty twist, some of those contents ended up becoming steaming-hot commodities on the e-commerce platform itself.
Pondering on how to get Amazon’s attention with this human rights issue, famed internet prankster Oobah Butler decided to pour the pee down a new channel.
@vice big tech company sells bottles of their drivers' 'piss'. lovely. catch oobah butler's #TheGreatAmazonHeist on C4, 10pm, 19th October, for more pranks. #amazon #amazontiktok #amazondrivers
♬ News, etc. Bright, fun and light 2-step(1323829) - 314P
Butler, an author and filmmaker, is best known for assembling a fake high-end restaurant from his shed and making it the top-rated venue in London on TripAdvisor in 2017. He also cheated his way up Paris Fashion Week, impressing unwitting style enthusiasts with knockoff garments he’d gotten from a market stall.
His unorthodox ways of getting to the bottom of things led to his hosting of an investigative Channel 4 documentary, The Great Amazon Heist, where he traveled to fulfillment centers in the UK, Italy, Spain, and the US to expose some of the company’s processes inside out. All these places had one thing in common, Butler discovered. Their networks all included delivery drivers dumping out bottles of urine “with varying shades of gold,” he wrote in a Vice article.
This sparked the idea to collect those bottles—why waste liquid gold? Butler waited out at a fulfillment center outside Tilbury, Essex, and stocked up enough to set up shop.
At first, he was unsure about how to repackage the pee, but he later remembered that there exists a growing market of “pump-and-dump energy drinks” peddled by influencers. With the right color (and, we have to assume, electrolytes), these bottled contents could surely pass off as beverages in the booming category.
Hence, ‘Release Energy’ was born. Working with his friend Stan Cross, Butler came up with the product’s packaging design. It was bright yellow, like the natural fluids it contained.
Hey @BearGrylls - big fan. Was wondering who I should contact about brand partnerships and influencing opportunities? Thank you very much. pic.twitter.com/0j5EAAcVDW
— Oobah Butler (@Oobahs) October 21, 2023
A semi-circle spelling the word “energy” sat above the name, Release, which made up the entire girth of the logomark. There’s an electrically-charged tip, while the volume of the drink appeared to dribble out of the head. Wait a minute…
So @Oobahs made this bottle of pee the #1 energy drink on Amazon.
— CEO of Yelling FRSA (@ChantayyJayy) October 19, 2023
Make sure you watch #TheGreatAmazonHeist on Channel 4 because it’s witty and thoughtful. Also we didn’t plan these outfits 😠pic.twitter.com/TchLbNlkQz
Butler had some ideas for slogans too, ranging from “the world’s first fully reusable energy drink,” to “once you’re done with its contents, simply fill it back up to the brim and start again,” and “infinite refills.” Importantly, Release was also “caffeine-free.”
On the back, the ingredients list displayed the chemical makeup of human urine: “water (95%), urea (2%), creatinine (0.1%), uric acid (0.03%), chloride, sodium, potassium, sulfate, ammonium, phosphate.”
To evade Amazon’s algorithm, Butler decided to list the product under the “refillable pump dispenser” category. To his surprise, it was automatically moved into “energy drinks” even though he didn’t have a food and beverage license.
— Oobah Butler (@Oobahs) October 19, 2023
The aim (heh) was to get the “energy drink” to a number-one bestseller spot, and to achieve that, he knew he’d need to put it in a niche category, like bitter lemons. It took months, but he finally convinced some people at Amazon UK to relocate his listing.
Once in, Butler got his friends to purchase the drink quickly, which “[spiked] the algorithm.” Then, even strangers bought the drink (as it seems, though, Butler never sent them the urine). It was an ongoing stream.
Eventually, Release Energy ranked at number one. “Take that, Schweppes!” Butler writes.
The joy was short-lived, however, as Amazon later removed the listing.
