eBay announces the opening of an environmentally friendly building on its North Campus in San Jose. It is the first building in San Jose to be built to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold standards for new construction, which is the second-highest LEED rating a building can receive. The building sits on a campus with the largest commercial solar installation in the city.

The campus has 3,248 solar panels covering 60,000 square feet - more than a football field - of roof supplying 18 percent of the campus’s power with a 650 kW system. With the largest commercial solar installation that is operational in San Jose, and because of its proximity to public transportation, eBay’s new building and campus reflect the close collaboration between the city and eBay to reduce its environmental footprint. City staff was instrumental in facilitating eBay’s move to this campus and ensuring flexibility to expand as the needs for the building and campus evolved.

Built from the ground up, the new building meets LEED specifications. LEED is the industry standard, third party rating system which certifies that a building has met the high standards for constructing an environmentally responsible and healthy place to work. In the new building, workstation lighting uses a dimming system that automatically dims based on the amount of sunlight entering the building, saving 39 percent of the energy normally used in the building for lighting. Low-flow showerheads and low-flow faucets have been installed to help reduce the amount of water used by 30 percent. Eco-friendly irrigation systems are also being installed and will reduce water use by approximately 30 percent. Lastly, more than 75 percent of the waste from the construction site was recycled, reused or otherwise diverted from landfill.

In addition, the features in the new green building offer a high-quality workplace environment for employees. Amenities include a state of the art fitness center and a light, airy, pan-Asian café complete with tandoori oven, wok station, noodle bar and fresh-made dim sum. Workstations and furniture throughout the building are "Greenguard" certified, meaning they emit a low number of particles to keep air cleaner.

eBay’s investment in its new "green" building is a reflection of its commitment to offer more ways for employees to incorporate green practices into their daily lives. SolarCity, which provided the solar panels for the new building, has offered employees a discount for installing solar panels in their homes and more than 500 employees have attended workshops about residential solar installations.

In addition, eBay Inc. offers employees a carbon offsetting program through TerraPass, which allows employees to measure their carbon footprint and purchase offsets to balance their impact. Further, eBay Inc. runs shuttles from its San Jose campuses to San Francisco in order to improve employee quality of life and get more cars off the road.

Being green is in eBay’s DNA. The marketplace was built to be an incredible engine for the reuse of goods and every day buyers and sellers are using eBay to make a difference on behalf of the environment. Over the last decade, this has translated into an estimated $100 billion in goods each year that were reused, as opposed to being thrown into landfills or producing and buying new items.