Trade Me wants to be carbon neutral by the middle of the year, says its general manager Jon Macdonald.
Macdonald says Trade Me is measuring and documenting its current carbon emissions, which he says are mostly due to travel and energy consumption.
Trade Me is working with Landcare and Deloitte on carbon audit and certification processes. The company is also investigating the most effective way to acquire carbon credits, along with the projects it can work on to offset its carbon emissions.
Macdonald, who was Trade Me’s CTO/CIO before taking on the number two role at the internet auction site in 2007, discusses Trade Me’s carbon and other strategies for 2008 in this month’s CIO magazine.
“We are not the first organisation [in New Zealand] to go carbon neutral,” he says, and he is confident the organisation can easily reach the goal. “We are quite small and I think it is a fairly straightforward exercise.”
Macdonald says sellers listing an item for sale will be able to choose to round up their success fees to the nearest dollar and donate the difference to conservation projects.
For the full Trade Me story, see February’s CIO.