PayPal, Inc. - How We Work - Environmental Sustainability

PayPal is well-positioned to help catalyze digital financial innovations to promote greater resilience among underserved communities, support relief efforts to those impacted by climate change, and reduce our impact on the environment.  

We use a science-based approach to take action, including: mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, efficiently managing our natural resources, exploring environmental innovations across our products and services, and engaging our employees in sustainability.  

Our Approach to Environmental Sustainability

Managing our impact

Since 2017, we’ve published environmental performance updates in our annual Global Impact Reports and demonstrated meaningful improvements to our sustainability practices and processes based on our Environmental Sustainability Policy and ISO 14001-aligned environmental management system. Please see our Environmental Policy for additional details.

Mobilizing our people

Our employees care deeply about the environment and volunteer their time and skills throughout the year to address sustainability issues. Whether it’s volunteering on Earth Day or exploring environmental innovation, we’re unlocking the creativity and passion of our people to advance our sustainability initiatives.

Driving innovation

We’re pursuing opportunities to drive positive environmental impact with our products and services. For example, Happy Returns allows both customers and merchants to have access to a network of Return Bar drop off sites where online returns are aggregated into reusable totes that help reduce cardboard waste and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). 

Equitable Climate Transition

Financial security is critical to the resilience of individuals, organizations, and communities impacted by a changing climate. The destabilizing effects of climate change— including increasingly frequent and severe storms, droughts and heatwaves — disproportionately affect the financially underserved.

As part of our mission to democratize financial services, we are exploring opportunities to mobilize our payments platform and manage our global environmental impacts to support an equitable transition to a net-zero economy.

Science-based Emissions Targets

We have established ambitious, measurable, and science-based emissions reduction targets informed by stakeholder consultation and validated by the Science Based Targets initiative. We transparently track progress toward our long-term goal of achieving net-zero GHG emissions across our value chain by 2040 and medium-term science-based targets aligned with limiting temperature rise to no more than 1.5˚C.

Renewable & Efficient Energy Use

We are identifying and incorporating energy efficiency measures and renewable energy use across our operations. Since 2021, we’ve sourced 100% of our global data center energy use with renewable generation. We prioritize cost-effective opportunities to invest in energy efficiency and procure renewable energy across our global office locations.

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Transparency & Reporting

We are committed to full transparency of our climate risks and opportunities, in line with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and other environmental reporting standards. We publish our annual energy and emissions inventory in our Global Impact Report and respond to the CDP Climate Change Survey.

Supply Chain

We’re engaging with our largest vendors by spend through the CDP Supply Chain to provide information and resources to help our vendors develop GHG inventories and learn more about science-based targets (SBTs). 

Learn about our commitment to supplier diversity

Photo credit: AMBIO

Digital finance for climate resilience

PayPal is a founding member of the Climate Innovation for Adaptation and Resilience (CIFAR) Alliance, a global initiative working to provide climate adaptation and resilience tools and resources to one billion of the world’s most vulnerable people.

A new climate Task Force, funded by PayPal and in collaboration with climate and digital finance experts, launched the Digital Finance for Climate Resilience Framework for Action. The Framework illustrates the opportunity for the digital finance sector to build greater climate resilience among financially underserved populations.

PayPal is also a founding supporter of Catalyst Fund – a global inclusive tech accelerator that helps startups build and deliver inclusive digital finance products and services.

Water Management

Given the digital nature of our business, we consume relatively low volumes of water. We maintain water efficiency standards, including low-flow faucets and fixtures, across our fully managed office locations globally, and consider opportunities to appropriately manage water resources.

We’ve also invested in intelligent flow control and monitoring technologies across our water systems at our heaquarters in San Jose, CA, and continue to identify consumption reduction strategies to support local water conservation efforts. We monitor and report annual water consumption in our annual Global Impact Report.

Employee-led Waste Audit at PayPal Headquarters

Waste Management

Nearly all global PayPal offices have implemented recycling programs, and many have food waste composting as well. We work with property managers, local waste hauling providers, and municipal jurisdictions to offer waste recycling in locations where it’s not currently provided.

We have implemented a zero-landfill strategy for electronic waste (e-waste) throughout our operations. Our companywide e-waste management procedure requires all IT asset disposal service providers to maintain certification to the R2, e-Stewards, or WEEELabex for responsible e-waste management.    