Recently, GreenTech TV Editor, Karen Nelson had the privilege to interview Libby Reder, eBay’s Head of Environmental Initiatives, and co-founder of the eBay Green Team to find out what is driving eBay’s green successes.
It was a great interview. Reder recognizes the collective power of what a passionate group of people can do, something she saw first-hand early in her career when she shaped policy on Capitol Hill. She helps eBay employees green the company from the inside out and she’s a leading force behind the Green Team's In Action partnerships and collaborations. She also loves the opportunity to talk green whenever she can.
In fact, the interview was so filled with interesting and useful information, that we made the decision to run it as a three part series.
In part one, our conversation focuses on the important role employees have played in greening eBay from the inside out. Enjoy.
KAREN: Since 1998, an estimated $100 billion in goods have been reused through eBay’s online marketplace. So you’re not only the world’s largest online marketplace, your also a smart way for shoppers to go green. Has the fact that your business is somewhat naturally aligned with the green movement been a factor in your green at work successes?
LIBBY: Absolutely. It all really starts with what happens every day in the eBay marketplace, the incredible scale and velocity of the trade of used products. When you think about the three R’s for environmental action (editors’ note: Reduce, Re-use, Recycle) people tend to focus on recycling. But reuse actually is a very powerful concept and one that we feel is highly related to our core business. So that was actually the original source of our environmental sustainability
KAREN: The employees at eBay seem to be very committed and active around green issues. What did you do to engage your employees around sustainability?
LIBBY: Actually I need to turn that question on its head and talk about how eBay’s employees engaged eBay. In 2007 a couple of us were tasked full time with taking a look at eBay’s sustainability performance, and as we talked to people it was clear there were a lot of employees who wanted to bring their green values to work. People wanted information and they wanted to get involved.
KAREN: I understand that eBay’s Green Team got its start back in May of 2007 when 40 or so people sat down, shared a pizza, and talked about how they could help make eBay a greener company. Today you have around 2,400 active employee members from over 23 countries involved. Now, it’s not always easy to channel grassroots energy into actionable initiatives. How were you able to do it?
LIBBY: There were a number of different factors that contributed to the growth. The first was just simple awareness-raising and a tiny bit of peer pressure. The original green team members became advocates for green behavior in the office, not quite the green police but certainly green mentors. They encouraged, and still encourage, colleagues to become part of the organization and to make good green decisions in the workplace. It really happened organically and it’s supported by a lot of volunteer time and engagement,
KAREN: How did eBay management initially react to all this grassroots interest and action?
LIBBY: Our CEO John Donaho is enormously committed to environmental responsibility in his personal life and he brings those values to work. So he wanted eBay, as a company, to do everything we could to help the emerging green culture thrive. So right now you could say we’re enjoying sort of a perfect storm of bottom up and top down support.
KAREN: It’s not easy to achieve that balance, allowing a grass roots movement to stay grass roots once a centralized organization gets involved. Has that been a problem?
LIBBY: We’ve really made an effort to not be prescriptive. Our focus is on fostering the decentralized nature of the group so people continue to feel empowered to create change that is important to them. For example, in some geographies people are most concerned about water conservation; in other locations their more concerned with energy conservation. So the local green teams focus on what they really care about, and that sustains their passion and energizes them to “be the change.”
KAREN: What are the teams doing? I know this is a tough question because there are so many successful eBay Green Team programs to choose from.
LIBBY: Absolutely…but, I’ll start with our Omaha location. We had a few employees who got together and wanted to use some of the unused eBay property to develop a community garden. They worked with local organizations to prepare the land for planting, and divided it into individual plots that employees could sign up for. Now, that previously unused land, is producing food that employees can take home and put on their table. It’s a fantastic example of the green team culture being brought to life.
KAREN: Don’t you have something similar happening here in San Jose?
LIBBY: Yes, but with a small difference. In San Jose the team developed gardens, with the idea of providing fresh organic ingredients for the breakfasts and lunches that are prepared right here on campus by Bon Appetit, our food provider. It’s a program that impacts and influences the entire San Jose team.
KAREN: I think I heard something about “funky mugs” and how they’ve helped reduce waste at eBay. What’s the story behind that?
LIBBY: (Laughing) Oh, the funky mugs. They’re a perfect example of grassroots change. It started in Salt Lake City, and has caught on at multiple locations. The team wanted to eliminate disposable coffee cups, but they didn’t want to create a top-down policy. Instead, they held a funky mug contest, challenging employees to bring in their most ridiculous mug from home, and then letting the employees pick the winners. The funkiest mug owners won solar powered backpacks and the kitchen ended up stocked with re-usable mugs that required no new materials and energy to manufacture. It also built team camaraderie for green.
KAREN: What about incentive programs to encourage green behavior adoption?
LIBBY: We think incentives are a really powerful tool in the effort to help people make change. We’ve been trying to “wean people” off plastic water bottles, for example. So we created high-end, customized SIGG bottles and gave them exclusively to green team members, The bottles created buzz and became such an eco status symbol that they occasionally go missing off people’s desks. So now we’re looking at an incentive aimed at the broader employee base.
KAREN: Transportation choices are central to living a greener lifestyle. Have you focused any initiatives on employee commute options?
LIBBY: Definitely. We have incentive programs in place to encourage eco-friendly commuter choices. They require working through a bit of localization and variation based on local transit options and state incentives, but are definitely worth it. One of our programs is set up so that each time an employee bikes or takes public transit to work they can enter their name into a monthly drawing. It’s popular and works well as a positive way to influence change and keep the issue top of mind.
KAREN: It seems obvious that the eBay Green Team has had a positive influence on the employee and company culture. How would you characterize the impact it’s had on employee morale and interaction?
LIBBY: Well beyond the sense of being part of a team that’s accomplishing good things, team members have told us that it gives them a chance to meet people from different functions across the organization and that it actually helps them be more productive because now if they have a question about legal, there’s a guy on the green team that they know in our legal department and they can just give him a call. You know we’re not a start up any more, we’re a global company with 15,000 employees, so it’s been a great way to build a strong community.
KAREN: We’ve established that eBay’s core businesses starts from a greener place, and that you have an incredibly engaged green employee base. But in addition eBay, as a company, has set a goal for 2012 to reduce your absolute greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent over your 2008 emissions.
LIBBY: Absolutely, we’re addressing everything from green data center design and building construction to generating alternative energy. In fact, this past month we rolled out our “Zero Waste for Green Space” program which will help us divert as much as 95% of our trash from going to a landfill, so we’re very focused on achieving that goal.
KAREN: Libby, as far as our readers are concerned, we’re going to stop here. However, you and I are staying to talk more about what eBay is doing to achieve your 2012 sustainability goals. That conversation will appear in Part II of this interview series, “eBay: Greening From the Inside Out” and will appear on March 9.