Addressing our carbon footprint
At Etsy, we take our environmental impact seriously, acknowledging the role that our business and industry play in contributing to global climate change. In this section, we’ll summarize our total carbon footprint in the spirit of transparency. We’re committed to addressing and reducing these impacts through innovative carbon reduction and offset programs, as well as investments in renewable energy to power our operations.
We report our carbon emissions in alignment with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the industry standard and international tool for greenhouse gas accounting. Our emissions from all aspects of our business operations are broken into three categories or scopes, and are defined below.
Summary of all carbon emissions in metric tons CO2e (MT CO2e)
Total 2015 Emissions: 89,510
Total 2014 Emissions: 80,810
| Scope | Total metric tons CO2e |
|---|---|
| Scope 1 emissions from onsite combustion* | 172 |
| Scope 2 emissions from electricity* | 2340 |
| Scope 3 emissions from shipping | 85687 |
| Scope 3 emissions from business travel | 804 |
| Scope 3 emissions from commuting | 428 |
| Scope 3 emissions from content delivery networks† | 40 |
| Scope 3 emissions from water and waste | 39 |
Below we break out our 2015 and 2014 carbon emissions by their respective scope as well as examine our carbon emissions intensity by employee and Gross Merchandise Sales (GMS). These intensity metrics can help us better understand the relationship between the growth of our business and our carbon impacts. Between 2014 and 2015 our total emissions went up by 11%, while the change in our intensity metrics, MTCO2e per employee and MTCO2e per $1 million GMS, varied. See below for an explanation of the trends we see in each of our scopes.
Scope 1 - Direct emissions
These emissions are from onsite fuel combustion, which is used to heat a handful of our offices around the world. Our total emissions grew as a result of some offices acquiring new and additional spaces to accommodate the hiring of new employees, as well as better availability of data in 2015 than in 2014. But our emissions per employee went down due to improvements in space efficiency utilization.
| Year | Total scope 1 emissions | Total scope 1 emissions per employee | Total scope 1 emissions per $1 million GMS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 172 MTCO2e* | 0.26 MTCO2e | 0.07 MTCO2e |
| 2014 | 144 MTCO2e | 0.29 MTCO2e | 0.075 MTCO2e |
Scope 2 - Indirect emissions
These emissions are from the purchase of electricity used to power our offices and data centers, globally. In 2015, we began construction of our new headquarters in Brooklyn as well as increased our power use at our data centers to support our growing business. For more detail on our energy use, click here.
| Year | Total scope 2 emissions | Total scope 2 emissions per employee | Total scope 2 emissions per $1 million GMS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 2340 MTCO2e* | 3.12 MTCO2e | 0.98 MTCO2e |
| 2014 | 1522 MTCO2e | 2.85 MTCO2e | 0.79 MTCO2e |
Scope 3 - Other indirect emissions
These emissions are from: marketplace shipping (shipping between buyers and sellers), business travel, commuting, Content Delivery Networks (aka CDNs), transmission of water, and methane gas production from waste. Since more than 95% of our total scope 3 emissions come from marketplace shipping the trends discussed here are driving the trends we see in the table below.
| Year | Total scope 3 emissions | Total scope 3 emissions per employee | Total scope 3 emissions per $1 million GMS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 86,998 MTCO2e | 114.72 MTCO2e | 36.4 MTCO2e |
| 2014 | 79,144 MT CO2e | 136.55 MTCO2e | 41.12 MTCO2e |
A note about the quality of our data
Each year we aim to increase the quality of the data reported. In 2015 we chose to revise our 2013-2014 GHG emissions after migrating our data to a new environmental management platform where updated emissions factors were applied. This allows us to provide accurate comparisons between the data year over year. In addition, as tenants of leased facilities, we do not yet have access to data related to heat source or generator diesel use in our data centers, the heat source in our new Brooklyn office, complete refrigerant sources‡, and our shared building common spaces energy sources. We are pursuing these data for future reports. In addition, we will continue to track and report our carbon emissions with the aim of better understanding the relationship between the growth of our business and the growth of our carbon footprint, and exploring initiatives that decouple carbon impacts from business expansion.
*Etsy commissioned PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP ("PwC") to provide third-party assurance of this data (for the period from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2015) in our 2015 Progress Report. For full details, see PwC's Report of Independent Accountants.
†This represents data received from one Content Delivery Network provider. We are working to get data from all providers in the future.
‡We did not have sufficient refrigerant source data to estimate refrigerant gas loss for our San Francisco, Brooklyn, Dublin and Berlin offices and three data centers in 2015.