Green Team Talks

Every year, eBay hosts an event at its headquarters that celebrates the innovative people that work here. In its sixth year, the innovation demo expo encourages employees to come up with new ideas for tools and applications that will make the eBay experience as best as it can be. Last year, one of the more memorable technologies that came out of this event was eBay's mobile app, which in large part helped the company earn the recognition as the 2009 mobile retailer of the year.

There were over 80 teams presenting this year, most of which came from employees who came up with ideas in their spare time and worked in small teams with colleagues to create demos. Among projects on how to better list items to using Twitter trends to display products, there were a few green standouts as well.

This morning, we unveiled a new, state-of-the-art technology at our PayPal campus in San Jose that will provide us with environmentally-friendly and inexpensive power from an innovative new fuel cell technology.

The world of infants and toddlers is filled with disposable and plastic items, but there are myriad ways to re-use baby goods that would otherwise end up in a landfill. Here's a few to try:The world of infants and toddlers is filled with disposable and plastic items, but there are myriad ways to re-use baby goods that would otherwise end up in a landfill. Here's a few to try:

Last week, several hundred business and non-profit executives gathered in Chicago to reflect on the "state of green business.” As more and more companies seek to offer environmentally friendly products, it’s also clear shoppers are getting more and more confused. Within the eBay Green Team community, we think about green shopping a bit differently. While consumers continue to care about the health of the planet, we also realize they have to balance that with other concerns, like tightening pocketbooks.

As people wager on who's going to win the downhill slalom or which country will have the highest medal count at this year's Winter Olympic Games, we heard about a different type of story that we thought was really cool. A Canadian company found a way to pull out gold, silver and bronze literally from old TVs and computers and turn them into the Olympic medals.

This morning, despite the massive storm that has hit the east coast, red carpets were unveiled, lights were lit and thousands of iconic designers descended upon New York City for Mercedes Benz Fashion Week. It begs the question about greening the fashion industry: what does sustainable fashion mean?

Adding additional life to computers by refurbishing them saves 5 to 20 times more energy than recycling them. Find out how to save money and help the planet with refurbished electronics, phones, furniture and more.

Over the last few years, we’ve had a chance to get to know the smart people at RecycleBank. As it’s grown, RecycleBank has been focused on rewarding customers for recycling – something that most people agree is a good thing for the environment. But we also found that we think alike, so we wanted to give you a window into some of their good green thinking.

This fall, you might have seen a set of advertisements that eBay ran that all ended with the “Come to think of it – eBay” tagline. When you looked at them through a green lens, many of the ads spoke to the idea that the greenest product is the one that already exists. Here's why:

This year, resolve to lighten the load on the landfill and the recycling bin by extending the lives of items... psst, it’ll save you money too.

On February 1, the group that oversees our facilities in San Jose is rolling out a new “Zero Waste for Green Space” program, which could help us divert as much as 95% of our trash from going to a landfill.

As GPS devices, smart phones, and social media play bigger and bigger roles in all our lives, we have the ability to connect with the people and places around us in new and unique ways, so that together our actions can combine to produce some pretty powerful results.