Chelsea Mozen, Etsy: Scaling Environmental Accountability – Well Made E122

Every time you order an item from a seller on Etsy, the company offsets the emissions created from shipping that order. Since the start of this initiative in February of last year, Etsy has invested in offsetting 173,000 metric tons of CO2. 

Emissions are broken down into three scopes, and Etsy's shipping emissions fall into the third scope — Indirect Emissions. (We suggest reading this blog post on greenhouse gas emissions as a primer on understanding the three scopes.) As is the case for most ecommerce companies, Scope 3 is the largest for Etsy, accounting for 95-98% of their total emissions. While offsetting these emissions accomplishes a big goal for the Etsy Sustainability team, Director of Sustainability, Chelsea Mozen says it's not the first or last item on their to-do list.

In this episode, Chelsea walks us through measuring and accounting for company emissions and how they've balanced internal priorities with customer expectations. 

Chesea shares how she got involved with Etsy's Sustainability Team just as it was getting started six years ago. She explains the different scopes of emissions and why Etsy is starting with offsetting (7:49). She breaks down the numbers on their shipping emissions, with data centers coming in at a distant second (9:55).

She does the math on how Etsy calculates their shipping emissions to account for remote work, business travel and employee transit (16:29). Then she gets into how they offset, while also actively working on reduction (19:31).

Chelsea talks about customer testing to see how the Etsy audience understands sustainability and what their priorities are (22:17). She points out why they are inspired by Salesforce, and some corporate sustainability red flags.

Etsy's sustainability priorities start with their own operations and the effects of their business. Chelsea talks about the ripple effect of their sustainability decisions and their to-do list for the next few years (31:51). Finally, she reinforces the importance of measuring your impact because you can't change what you can't measure (48:30).

Also mentioned on this episode: 

• ESG framework (Environmental, Social, Governance)
• Offsetting Carbon with Peter Dering, founder and CEO of Climate Neutral
• How to Estimate the Carbon Footprint of Your Packaging
• Blue Earth, USPS
• 3Degrees Climate Solutions
• Etsy Impact on Medium
• Etsy 2019 10-K