What are the most sustainable marketplaces in Europe? Cross-Border Sustainable Marketplaces rankings.
By Kevin van der Eijk
Posten on 20 April, 2022
Sustainability and environmental awereness is becoming a bigger and bigger topic in the world and thus also within e-commerce. The research company Cross-border conducts large-scale research on the e-commerce market and has released a research report on sustainable marketplaces in 2021. This report lists the top 100 most sustainable marketplaces available within Europe.
All companies included in this research were able to achieve a score of 100 across 10 KPIs. Examples of the weighted KPIs are sustainability goals, cetification, carbon footprint, transportation and logistics solutions, shopping experience and business model. In this article, we briefly cover a few of these marketplaces and how they score well within this research.
eBay
For decades, eBay has been working hard to make its business more sustainable. Several times they have come out as winners in sustainability surveys and this year they come in a neat place at the top. eBay tests products specifically for sustainability and in recent years has invested heavily in improving the c2c marketplace to encourage second-hand sales.
Redbubble
Redbubble aims to become a largest independent marketplace where people can sell their creative items and art. In doing so, they feel that the responsibility comes from making this as conscious and sustainable as possible. Because they have made this their mission, they have landed on the we spot in the sustainability survey. Redbubble is also actively working against racism and for social equality.
Etsy
Etsy is a global platform for (selling) unique and creative products. Within this market, they see it as their responsibility to be impact conscious and sustainable. As such, Etsy sets specific requirements for positive impact and offers support for sustainability. Recently, Etsy acquired the marketplace Depop, another marketplace that scores high within the Cross-Border Sustainable Marketplaces research.
Bol.com
Bol is ranked 8th in the first edition of the TOP 100 Cross-Border Sustainable Marketplaces in Europe. This is an impressive place as many marketplaces that rank high on this list exclusively or mainly sell second-hand products. Bol therefore has strong climate goals and aims to make climate-neutral shopping possible by 2025.
Vinted
It is quite possible that the winner in the first spot in the next top 100 Sustainable Marketplaces rankings will place second-hand clothing marketplace Vinted from Lithuania. Vinted was founded in 2008 and since then has grown into one of the largest online thrift stores in Europe. Last year, Vinted was not so high at the top of the rankings but from the latest study, Vinted has moved into the No. 1 spot with an impressive score of 70/100 so far.
Top positives dominated by second-hand marketplaces
Quite obviously, second-hand marketplaces are easily a lot more sustainable than marketplaces that only sell new products. Not surprisingly, the top 10 is dominated by secondhand marketplaces and resell platforms.
American marketplaces
In the first edition of the Sustainable Marketplaces rankings, it is already easy to see how American companies emerge as the clear majority. This is because these marketplaces have also often been around a bit longer and have a larger reach. Because of these factors, they are already at a further stage where they can and should be concerned with the sustainability of their platform. Slowly but surely, you can see that European and Asian marketplaces are also becoming more concerned with sustainability and the environment.
Now if you are interested in the full report it is available on Cross-border's website:
https://www.cbcommerce.eu/product/top-100-sustainable-marketplaces-report/
Manage your sustainable e-commerce business and achieve optimal impact with FiveX's tools.
If you are striving to maximize positive impact with your business, it is super important that you have a total overview of your business. With the tools from FiveX you not only manage your business, but you are also able to automate certain things so you can focus on what is really important to you. The overview and tools of FiveX are multichannel, which means that you have all the data of your active marketplaces together. So you can simply sell on multiple sustainable marketplaces without losing the overview.
