Etsy – Anya Shapiro – 2020

Goals

Etsy Inc., an online marketplace for unique, handmade, and vintage goods, is the first e-commerce company to launch 100% carbon neutral shipping. Etsy enlisted Anya Shapiro to explore impactful opportunities to further reduce its indirect (Scope 3) solid waste and greenhouse gas emissions through sustainable packaging. Given Etsy’s distributed base of global sellers and the large diversity of products offered on the platform, Etsy tasked Shapiro with exploring the viability of sustainable packaging solutions that could reduce environmental impacts and mitigate both seller and buyer pain points.

Solutions

Using the insights gleaned through detailed carbon and accounting, a comprehensive landscape assessment, and staff and supplier interviews, Shapiro developed business strategies to generate environmental benefits in multiple focus areas, including:

1. Determining Etsy’s current packaging footprint by developing a comprehensive emissions and solid waste accounting tool and identifying the largest opportunities for environmental improvements
2. Identifying packaging partners and suppliers who could potentially help Etsy develop a cost-effective sustainable packaging solution for its seller base

Impact

Shapiro’s work provided Etsy with quantitative tools and a strategic framework to understand packaging environmental impacts across its seller base.

Shapiro’s work will help Etsy make data-driven decisions about sustainable packaging and increase the impact of its carbon-neutral shipping program.