Sustainability news

Prosus's classifieds business OLX Group is made up of 10,000 employees building more than 20 leading brands and marketplaces present in over 40 markets across multiple continents. Our unifying purpose is: we shape the future of trade to unlock the hidden value in everything.

Unlocking hidden value aligns tightly with sustainability -- it’s about recognizing resources are limited, doing more with less, and making the most of what we have. Our vision is to move from a make-take-dispose world to make-take-re-use.

The core essence of our classifieds business is to facilitate trade, with a large component around the buying and selling of second-hand items. Our trading platforms inherently embrace and amplify conscious consumption as items find second, third, and even fourth lives, contributing to a more circular economy.

Given the scale at which our platforms operate, the cumulative environmental impact of purchasing second-hand instead of new is massive. As our over 300 million unique users per month transact with each other, the benefits stack up with fewer materials, energy, water and other limited natural resources potentially being consumed.

For the past two years, we’ve partnered with 3rd party analysts to capture the data and help us prepare our OLX Group Impact Report which models corresponding savings from the trade conducted on our platforms.

Second-hand trade conducted by our users in 2020 alone represented a savings equivalent of:

• Over 5.5 billion kg of materials (the mass of over 71,000,000 washing machines)
• Over 842 million GJ-equivalent of energy (the yearly energy consumption of over 21,000,000 American households)
• Over 481 million cubic meters of water (the yearly consumption of over 1,100,000 American households)
• Over 59 million tons of CO2-equivalent emissions (over 20,000,000 passengers flying from Amsterdam to Los Angeles)

These estimates are based on just a subset of the trade we actually facilitate. We aim to extend the measurement of the impact and see it grow as our platforms do.

Our dreams are bigger than just measuring impact, though. We aspire to influence the culture of consumption around the world. We believe we can help make second-hand the first choice for many more people, which is a healthier and more sustainable way of life.

Our sustainability lens doesn’t just look at our customers - we look at ourselves, too. We are committed to doing our part by scrutinizing our own greenhouse gas emissions and finding ways to reduce them. In June 2021, we announced we became carbon neutral in our operations, and see this as the first step towards further reducing our carbon emissions as a company.

We are grateful to the experts who have been assembled to help us walk this walk. Namely, we work with sustainability experts from Prosus, EY, South Pole, and Rebel to provide expertise in helping guide us and ensure we are unlocking the hidden value in our company.

Because, like other precious and limited resources, there is no time to waste.