eBay

The Power of One: eBay

December 6, 2010

“The Power of One” is a series of stories about people who have made their companies more sustainable. (See yesterday’s story on UL Environment.) They can’t do it alone, of course. But by coming up with a good idea, enlisting the help of others and making persuasive arguments, one person can change a company and, sometimes, more. That may require thinking outside the box; today’s story, about Karenina Susilo of eBay,  is instead about thinking about a box.

Lorin May and Karenina Susilo of eBay

Lorin May and Karenina Susilo of eBay

During her five years working at eBay, Karenina Susilo has spent a lot of time staring at screens. Karenina, who is 33, is a designer and an expert on user experiences — her masters degree from Stanford is in learning, design and technology, and she worked at Yahoo! before joining eBay in 2005. Her job is to help make it easier, more convenient and more fun for eBay’s users to do whatever it is they want to do when they come to the site.

You might think that working in software is pretty cool, and it is. But when people do it day in and day out, some of them evidently get the urge to work with real stuff–something you can hold in your hand. So, at least, says Karenina, who with her colleagues has spent a good bit lately working on a box.

“The idea of working on something tangible was pretty cool,” she says. People got excited about it.”

Maybe that’s because this was no ordinary box. Karenina and a group of software designers–who eventually joined forces with dozens of other people across eBay–came up with a durable, environmentally friendly shipping box.

This box is good for the planet because it’s made from Forest Stewardship Council-certified, 100% recycled material and it can be reused countless times. It’s good for eBay sellers because it saves them money; they don’t have to buy their own boxes. It’s good for eBay buyers because when they receive a box, they can sign up for $1 in eBay Bucks, a rewards program. And it’s good for eBay’s business because it creates loyalty among both buyers and sellers, and enhances the company’s reputation as a “green” brand.

What’s most interesting about this story, though, is how eBay, as a company, made it relatively easy for Karenina to get outside the box of her regular job. Every year, eBay sponsors an event known as the Innovation Expo. It’s a science fair for grownups–employees bring their [click to continue…]

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E-commerce: Good for the planet?

September 13, 2010

I’m not much of a shopper, but when I buy stuff, I prefer to do it online. I don’t like shopping malls, driving in traffic, crowded stores or dealing with “customer service” people. I do enjoy getting packages at home.

Now, it turns out, there may be another reason to shop online: E-commerce is a way to help  fight climate change.

So, at least, says eBay and a carbon-footprint consulting firm called Cooler, in a report due out today. (I’ll post a link to the report when it goes public.)  In particular, the report argues, eBay’s business of enabling peer-to-peer selling and small retailers generates significant environmental value. You’d expect eBay to say that, of course, but there’s logic behind the claim. The report says:

By minimizing infrastructure, reducing the need for warehousing, and maximizing transportation efficiency, small online retailers
have created a climate-friendly way to buy and sell. All-electronic, with no need for everything from mannequins to signage to giant rooftop air conditioning units, they have dematerialized considerable parts of the retail process.

John Donahoe

This morning, I’ll be moderating a discussion about the study at the National Press Club with John Donahoe, eBay’s president and CEO; Michel Gelobter, the founder of Cooler and author of the white paper; and Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. [Disclosure: eBay is paying me to host the event.] This Washington showcase for Donahoe, to which environmental leaders have been invited, is the latest effort by eBay’s  to position itself as an environmentally-friendly company, largely because it sells used products. [See my blogpost Why eBay is a green giant and this Greenbiz interview with Donahoe.] To its credit, eBay is also a founding member of BICEP, a coalition of companies pushing for climate change regulation.

I have to admit that I was skeptical about eBay’s claim that e-commerce is climate-friendly when I heard about it from Amy Skoczlas Cole, who leads eBay’s Green Team. After all, aren’t big retailers like Wal-Mart renowned for their efficiency, their logistics, their fine-tuned global supply chains? The economies of scale and all that? Well, yes, but peer-to-peer retailers–the small businesses supported by eBay–tend to be pretty efficient, too, because they have to be. (The last time I bought a book online from a small store, it came in a previously-used box.) These small e-tailers operate out of their own homes and garages. They don’t need big parking lots of warehouses. They ship by delivery services like UPS, FedEx and the post office which move goods around a lot more efficiently than suburban shoppers do when they drive to and from a big-box store.

They’re also a force in the economy. In 2009, the report says, peer-to-peer online sales operations generated more than $31 billion in sales and despite the recession, their revenues grew, as did their market share of all online sales, to about 20.9%.  Using admittedly rough estimates, the report says:

Compared to a single big box retail store grossing $100 million per year, the day-to-day operations of $100 million in sales through Web-based peer-to-peer marketplaces generate approximately 1,400 tons fewer CO2-equivalent emissions per year.

Three types are savings are significant, the report argues:

1. Without the need for stores, or chains of them, peer-to-peer retailing saves everything from the carbon cost of making bricks and cements to the everyday costs of heating and lighting retail spaces, not to mention the giant neon signs outside big box stores.

2. Warehousing in garages and spare rooms can eliminate big warehouses that eat up land and consume energy

3. Home deliver is more efficient than people driving mostly empty cars around.

I’ll be interested to learn more during today’s discussion. Did Cooler take the energy costs of operating the data centers than run the Internet, as well as individual home computers into account? How much of eBay’s business comes from the mom-and-pop retailers, and how much from big companies that operate warehouses and manage global supply chains? And, while the big box model has its obvious problems, shouldn’t “green” consumers at least consider supporting retailers like Walmart and Best Buy that use their clout to promote environmentally-friendly practices. (See Walmart, bully for good and Best Buy wants your electronic junk at fortune.com.) Will peer-to-peer sellers recycle phones as Sprint does, or support sustainable forestry practices as Staples does?

None of this is simple. I love the fact that eBay sells used stuff–that’s almost surely better than buying new–and I’ll remain a fan of Internet shopping. But let’s not forget that when it comes to saving the planet, the best buying decision we can make is not to buy at all.

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Sustainable consumption: Opportunity or oxymoron?

August 19, 2010

Imagine that you’re the chief sustainability officer of a FORTUNE 500 company. During a meeting with your CEO, you say: “We need to talk to consumers about using less.”

Improbable? Sure.

Impossible? Perhaps not.

An important conversation to start? Absolutely.

So, at least, says Aron Cramer, the CEO of Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), a nonprofit association of companies, whose mission is to promote a just and sustainable world.

“The American model of consumption cannot be extended to the entire world, and won’t be, because the planet simply can’t support it,” Aron told me, when we spoke by phone the other day. Yet billions of people around the world want to improve their standard of living. Figuring out how they can enjoy a better life, without destroying the environment, “is the mother of all innovation challenges,” Aron says,

Last month, BSR published a 26-page report called The New Frontier in Sustainability: The Business Opportunity in Tackling Sustainable Consumption [PDF, free download). It’s an attempt to get business leaders to think about what sustainable consumption might look like.

The topic “has been the third rail of sustainability politics,” Aron told me, but he added, with his usual optimism, that “more companies are ready to have this discussion.”

If nothing else, the report makes clear the urgency of the issue. Citing a WWF report [PDF], it says:

By recent estimates, our global footprint now exceeds the world’s capacity to regenerate by about 30 percent, and if our current demands continue, by 2030 we will need the equivalent of two planets to maintain our lifestyles.

And yet:

…countless people have insufficient access to basic needs like food, clean water, and adequate shelter, and they also lack access to the resources they need to improve their lives. In 2006, the 1.2 billion people in the OECD countries had an average annual income per capita of US$30,580, while the 5.4 billion people in the rest of the world earned an average of US$3,130. Of those, 19 percent suffer from hunger, 28 percent are drinking polluted water, and 29 percent are illiterate.7 More than 2 billion people continue to rely on less than US$2 per day to meet their needs.

The question is, what business opportunities, if any,  await companies that figure out how to give poor and middle class people what they want in a sustainable way? [click to continue…]

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Why eBay is a green giant

February 15, 2010

“These are J. Crew pants,” Amy Skoczlas Cole tells me, pointing at the gray slacks she’s wearing. “I bought them on eBay. A season old, worn once by the seller is what she told me. I’m not going to tell you what I paid for them, but I got a great deal.”

This is called walking the talk. Amy is head of  the eBay Green Team and a lifelong environmentalist, who spent nearly 15 years at Conservation International before joining the Silicon Valley e-commerce giant.

eBayGreenTeamSo, I asked her, did you buy the used pants because you work at eBay or because you are an environmentalist?

Neither, it turns out.  “I bought them,” she replied, “because I wanted a great deal on J. Crew pants.”

eBay, it turns out, is a unique position to do what other big companies and even big environmental groups cannot: It can urge people to consume less.

This is important because, despite what the sellers of compact fluorescent bulbs, stainless steel water bottles, bamboo bed sheets, and eco-friendly dish sponges will tell you, I’ve never believed we could shop our way to a greener planet. To the contrary: Buying more stuff depletes natural resources and generates carbon emissions, pollution and waste. Conventional consumption is a problem, not a solution. (See Wanted: A Cultural Revolution.)

But shopping on eBay, arguably, is different. One mantra of environmentalism is reduce, reuse and recycle. And no one–not even Goodwill or the Salvation Army–does more to promote reuse than eBay. EBay sells $2,000 worth of  junk previously-owned merchandise per second, Amy tells me. “Barely used is as good as new” is how the company puts it in commercials like this one. Or, as she says: “The greenest product is the one that already exists.”

“Our single minded mission is to build a movement in society to use what already exists,” Amy says. “Very few companies can stand up and say to consumers, let’s use what exists in the world today.”

Interestingly, eBay has begun to explore the idea of “sustainable consumption” — if that’s not an oxymoron. [click to continue…]

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