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On May 8, 2008, eBay announced the opening of an energy efficient office building on its San Jose North Campus. The 200,000-square-foot building houses 800 employees and meets the US Green Building's Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold standard. Green features include a larger than football field sized commercial solar roof array. Also part of the new building are lights that are automatically programmed for energy efficiency, low flow faucets and showerheads, and eco-friendly furniture. More than 75 percent of the construction waste from the new building was diverted from landfills through reuse or recycling.
Wood Turner, Project Director of Climate Counts (http://www.climatecounts.org), a nonprofit organization that rates corporations on their efforts towards mitigating climate change, says that eBay's new solar powered green building "marks an incredibly important climate action from eBay."
eBay's business model has always been intrinsically, if not intentionally, green. As Gary Dillabough, eBay's General Manager of Corporate Environmental Initiatives puts it, "half the goods each day that are sold on eBay are used goods and that is a great thing for the environment. Those goods don't require raw materials. Those goods don't end up in a landfill. We are really the only platform in the entire world where reuse takes place on that type of scale. Sellers on eBay are doing a relatively positive thing."
eBay also encourages sellers to take green a step further than just selling reused products. Last year eBay Live featured a class entitled "Green is Green" where approximately thirty-five participants learned how to save money by increasing efficiency and reducing environmental impacts.
The United States Postal Service, a major partner for eBay, announced last June that co-branded eBay Priority Mail and Express Mail envelopes and packages achieved "Cradle to Cradle" Certification at the Silver level from McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry. The recycled material used in the co-branded envelopes and packages prevents thousands of tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually. When it comes to eco-friendly packaging material to put inside shipping boxes, Dillabough admits "we don't have a great solution," but eBay is working on developing recommendations. Dillabough also notes that sellers and buyers concerned about carbon emissions may choose ground shipping over air.
Is it really important to know how serious businesses like eBay are about environmental issues? "We believe that it is critical for all companies, just like it is for all consumers frankly, to understand what they are emitting," says Climate Counts' Wood Turner. Prior to eBay's announcement of its new green building, Climate Counts gave eBay a low score on their climate change scorecard for companies, mainly because eBay lagged behind leading green companies who made their greenhouse gas emissions inventories public and made strong statements to their consumers and legislators about the importance of the climate issue. "In a very real way, one can make a great argument that (eBay) is a climate friendly business model," says Turner. "Clearly it would have a great story if it would begin to engage its consumers more actively around that issue."
Consumers may soon see more green action on eBay. "We don't talk about it much on the website" says Dillabough but he insists "the environmental intelligence of the company matters to us." Dillabough admits, "it is kind of hard for us to tell people to be environmentally sensitive if we don't have our house in order. We are getting very close to having that done." eBay hired a consultant last year to conduct a company greenhouse gas emission overview. Among other things, the consultant recommended that eBay build new company buildings to be more efficient.
Dillabough says it makes sense to eBay to work internally first. An employee "Green Team" was launched by forty environmentally-minded eBay employees last May to educate employees about eBay's green efforts and empower them to take environmental action. The Green Team has now grown to over 1100 employees in twenty different countries. In eBay's Salt Lake City and Vancouver offices, Dillabough says employees "are really concerned about legislation that might be worked upon regarding solar or water issues, so we try to give them materials and funding to go after those areas." Green Team members participate voluntarily "so we want make sure it is something that is really localized so they can take action against the things they care about," says Dillabough.
eBay's employee Green Team also serves as an education prototype for improving the environmentally sensitivity of site users. Dillabough says "hopefully once we understand how to educate them, we can figure out the best way to educate our consumer base," adding "it's something we are really excited about."
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