Getting from here to there

Etsy is a global company with offices and employees around the world. Travel among offices helps us stay connected, build strong teams, and make amazing products, but also results in pollution and carbon emissions. So we’ve been measuring these impacts and putting strategies and goals in place to address our emissions from travel and commuting.

Commuting

Our annual employee commuting survey showed that we favor people-powered and public transit modes of transportation. Over 62% of our commuting miles were logged on public transportation, with only 31% of our commuting miles coming from cars alone. Throughout the year our Carbon Neutral Commuting Taskforce hosted bike-to-work campaigns and bike-themed Lunch & Learns to get even more employees on board with carbon neutral commutes, and we’re researching new ways to support and transition employees who travel by car to alternative commutes.

Overall, emissions from commuting per employee grew by 15% year-over-year in 2015. We hypothesize that this increase is because of the fact that, of the total miles Etsy employees traveled in commuting to and from work, the percentage of miles we traveled via car increased by 8%. Though a small increase, the impact is amplified by the fact that emissions factors for cars are weighted more heavily than all other modes of transportation. In fact, the emissions factor for cars is 2.7x that for rail travel. Here’s a breakdown of our commuting behavior as a company, by mode of travel.

Business travel

Unsurprisingly, the greatest carbon consumption from our business travel comes from flying. This year Etsy employees flew approximately 9,034,325 kilometers (5,613,669 passenger miles) for work. In 2016 we plan to increase the scope of our business travel data, and we’re implementing a travel management system that captures other forms of travel, such as rail. Additionally, we'll be introducing travel tools and policies that encourage the use of lower carbon options.

In 2015, our total greenhouse gas emissions per employee decreased by 25% from 1.42 metric tons of CO2e in 2014 to 1.06 metric tons of CO2e in 2015. Our headcount growth in Europe (30%) may have contributed to this decrease, as employees in this region tend to travel shorter distances when on business travel and often travel via train, which has a much lower carbon footprint than flying. A change in our estimation methodology between 2014 and 2015, also contributed to a decrease in total travel emissions.

Methodology

Commuting
In 2015 we used an updated survey methodology in an effort to more accurately capture our employees commuting behaviors and the associated, estimated carbon emissions. We surveyed 547 employees (out of a total of 758), and extrapolated the results across the entire employee population to arrive at the estimates published in this report. The survey-based methodology used to calculate emissions from commuting are in line with the GHG Protocol.

In our survey we asked Etsy employees to indicate which modes of transportation they took on each of five work days. We then summed the total number of modes, and calculated a proportion based on the modes they took in a given week. We calculated the distance each employee travels using zip or postal code. The distance used was “as the crow flies,” not driving distance. We used “as the crow flies” distance instead of driving distance due to variations in mode routes: Ferry is direct; the bus is not; the subway is more direct, etc. If we couldn't calculate the distance between two zip codes, we used the midpoint of the reported range of distance.

Travel
To arrive at our emissions calculations for business travel, we worked with an external partner, Ecometrica. Air travel trip information was pulled from travel expense reimbursements, supplemented with more detailed routing and class of service information where available from expense reports. In areas where we identified gaps, we applied an uplift to the data derived from the average spend per mile from our expense report.

The emissions factors applied came from DEFRA, the United Kingdom's environmental agency. Different emissions factors were used for short, medium, and long-haul flights, and all of these included an 8% increase to account for indirect flight patterns and circling. A blend of emissions factors was used based on Etsy's mix of service classes, primarily coach and premium economy, with less than 7% of flights in business and first class. In the past, we had applied a radiative forcing factor of 1.9 to account for the net additional non-CO2 warming effects of aircraft emissions (e.g., NOx, soot, contrails, high-altitude emissions) but removed this from our methodology for all 2013 - 2015 data as per Ecometrica’s guidance.