Business travel is Etsy’s third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.
As a global company with offices in seven countries and teams collaborating across both physical offices and remote locations, business travel is vital to staying culturally connected and building successful teams.
2014 was the second year we collected employee travel data and our tracking methodology is ever improving. To learn more about our methodology, please visit the data transparency section of this report. Our analysis grew in 2014 to include employees based outside the U.S. We are currently able to report only on air travel. We are working on new tracking systems to collect data on rail and other modes of transportation for future reporting.
Total greenhouse gas emissions (CO2e) from air travel
2013*
2014
To draw a year-over-year comparison, we have to isolate our results for U.S.-based employees from those based outside of the U.S., because we did not capture travel for non-U.S. employees in 2013. By that measure our total emissions per employee has actually decreased from 2.5 metric tons of CO2e in 2013 to 2.2 metric tons of CO2e in 2014. When we include our greenhouse gas emissions from international employee travel in 2014, our average emissions per employee equals 2.4 metric tons of CO2e.
*Note: Our 2013 travel emissions estimates were based on travel agency–provided data for the U.S. only and used their greenhouse gas emissions conversions.