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“We want to push the envelope,” says Libby Reder, eBay’s Head of Environmental Initiatives, in regards to the mission of the Green Team. To inspire everyone to become “smarter, greener consumers.”
We’ve covered some of eBay’s efforts in social enterprise previously, but as Earth Day rapidly approaches, the company is making a point to highlight many of its green efforts across the board. Not only does it boast a LEED-Gold certified campus at its corporate headquarters in San Jose, CA (which also houses the city’s largest solar installation), the company is also proud to not have a large supply chain nor retail footprint. Rather, eBay views itself as more of a conduit, a connector. Even a changegent, to use a term previously discussed here. A connector of buyers and sellers, eBay has the unique ability to impact both the supply AND demand sides of commerce.
3 Ways to Shop Green by eBay
1. Buy Resource Preserving Products: From brighter bulbs to smarter faucets to things that run on people power, according to the company, products that save resources preserve the greater good.
2. Buy Sustainable Products: Buy products, as eBay says, that were designed to live longer than a day. Products made from organic or otherwise sustainably-produced methods and materials take less from the planet and ensure that we can go on producing for generations to come.
3. Buy Recycled, Repurposed, Reincarnated: Purchasing used, refurbished, or vintage items saves resources from being used in the production of new goods and extend the lives of products, not to mention the carbon footprint inherent in that kind of production. And as the people at eBay say, be it vintage, used, or pre-owned, it’s still new to you…
30 Days of Green
As a way to spread the message about the new Green Team initiatives, eBay partnered with the Hearst Group to create a campaign called “30 Days of Green” that will run throughout all of the Hearst Group’s print publications.
Apperaing in Marie Claire, Good Housekeeping, Harper’s Bazaar, and even Cosmopolitan to name a few, eBay wants to share the information on being a smarter, green consumer to customers in their “natural habitat,” in the words of Reder. Each publication will run editorial/advertorial throughout the entire month of April that speak to their specific demographic (read: Cosmo providing tips on the best natural or organic body oils to give your man), accompanied by some of the green buying options available on eBay’s online marketplace.
Partnerships like these with the Hearst Group as well as with NGOs and non-profits will, in the hopes of eBay and its Green Team, help foster the conversation around the way we think about what we buy.
Is Used Really the Way to Be Green?
In a recent press release, eBay’s president and CEO John Donahoe said, “eBay buyers and sellers trade $2,000 worth of goods every second, a majority of which are used, refurbished, or vintage.” The purchase and sale of these types of products amount to $100 billion of commerce over 10 years on the online marketplace, according to Reder, amounting to a significant portion of the company’s revenue.
However, Michael Brune, the executive director of the Rainforest Action Network is a bit more skeptical about the emphasis on used goods as a characterization of being green. He told the New York Times in an article yesterday: “A lot of the things sold on eBay are new merchandise, and last time I checked the Postal Service still used fossil fuels for all of their planes and their trucks, so it’s not sustainable,” he said, referring to how eBay sellers ship items. “It’s fair to say that buying used goods on eBay is better for the environment, but let’s not get carried away and say this is the greenest thing since recycled paper.”
Recycled paper it is not, but eBay is happy to admit that as well. They never saw the “30 Days of Green” campaign (which incidentally has found criticism for not being on recycled paper) nor its Green Team initiatives as end all, be all. In fact the launch of the Green Team doesn’t even have specific sales or other trackable goals attached to it. Rather, they want to see a community starting to built around it. And eBay has partnered with the US Postal Service to offer Cradle-to-Cradle certified packaging at no extra cost to the consumer as a way to partially offset the unsustainable nature of packaging and delivery of goods.
The Green Team is a start, not necessarily the solution for eBay. An investigation. A way to start conversation.
Readers: What do you think? Should eBay be applauded for its efforts? Or do its critics have merit and is this a matter of corporate greenwashing? Start the conversation…
