The global visual search and discovery platform leverages Watershed to drive data-based sustainability across its operations
Pinterest partnered with Watershed to launch and drive its sustainability program, achieving 100% renewable energy for global offices and setting science-based targets. By focusing on reducing scope 3 emissions from cloud computing, Pinterest optimized its AWS infrastructure, resulting in significant carbon savings and demonstrating long-term commitment to sustainability.
Challenge
Global Sustainability Lead Mia Ketterling faced the task of communicating sustainability's importance to senior leaders with diverse priorities. She needed a comprehensive platform to accurately measure Pinterest's emissions footprint, provide accessible data for stakeholders, and facilitate goal-setting and achievement.
Solution
Using Watershed, Pinterest measured its emissions back to the baseline year of 2019, established and reached its 100% renewable energy goal, and forecast and set its sustainability goals. Watershed provides the team with data to inform internal stakeholders across the organization and helps them efficiently address all aspects of their emissions in one place.
Results
Challenge
Pinterest is the visual inspiration platform where people go to search, save, and shop for the best ideas in the world for all of life’s moments, like recipes, home and style inspiration, and more. With half a billion monthly users and billions of pins, Pinterest has long recognized its need to understand its carbon footprint and reduce its environmental impact.
Around 2016, Mia Ketterling, who was a Design Program Manager at the time gathered with a cross-functional team of employees passionate about sustainability and began talking about Pinterest’s environmental footprint. The more they dug in, the more they realized that they lacked the data and resources necessary to measure Pinterest’s impact on the environment.
Because Pinterest is an online platform, the group’s hunch was that one of the largest sources of emissions would be from the data centers that make Pinterest possible. So the group initiated conversations with Pinterest’s cloud computing partner to learn about its sustainability goals and targets—and explore how Pinterest could start receiving its own emissions data.
“In partnering with our cloud computing partner, I felt that Pinterest had the opportunity to raise our concerns about sustainability, drive change, and create impact and progress—not only for our company but for others within the industry, too,” Mia says. In 2021, Pinterest created its first full-time position for a Workplace Sustainability Manager and Mia stepped into the role.
Currently Pinterest’s Global Sustainability Lead, Mia has had to secure leadership buy-in and address the varying needs of investors, advertisers, regulatory agencies, employees, and users. As the program has scaled, Mia has increasingly needed reliable, up-to-date data to articulate the state of sustainability at Pinterest and its goals.
Solution
Early in her role, it became clear to Mia that Pinterest needed a software solution to help them measure their emissions and set targets. She reached out to Watershed, and the software was a great fit for where Pinterest was in its sustainability journey.
“We chose Watershed because it felt like it could help solve several challenges in one product, versus needing to onboard several expensive consultants and engage with different providers. Having our end-to-end climate program in one platform has driven efficiencies and saved me time, and the hands-on support from the team has been invaluable.”
Mia Ketterling,
Global Sustainability Lead at Pinterest
Since onboarding Watershed in 2021, Pinterest has been able to measure its emissions back to the baseline year of 2019, set and achieve its 100% renewable energy goal, as well as forecast and set near-term science-based targets.
What’s more, Watershed has helped Mia and key sustainability players at Pinterest better understand its scope 3 emissions from its supply chain. “Being armed with data around our supply chain informs conversations with internal stakeholders and has been instrumental in driving our program forward,” Mia says. “Watershed has been there every step of the way on our journey, and I’m so thankful for their partnership.”
Mia also relies on Watershed and its expert support to help Pinterest stay on top of the latest regulatory requirements and to provide inputs on the goals she sets for the program. “It’s reassuring to know Watershed has experts keeping a close eye on these regulations and can provide helpful guidance on how they will impact our company,” she says.
Results
With Watershed, Mia has streamlined sustainability efforts at Pinterest by measuring and forecasting emissions, identifying reduction initiatives, and understanding Pinterest’s supply chain—all with one platform.
In 2022, Pinterest also committed to setting near-term emissions reduction targets in line with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), and, in 2023, its three emissions reduction targets were validated, including:
Since setting these near-term science-based targets, Mia has been focused on measuring progress against the goals using Watershed’s reductions module—and in 2023 they achieved their goal of 100% renewable electricity.
By leveraging Watershed's audit-ready capabilities, Mia has built confidence in Pinterest’s sustainability plans with internal and external stakeholders.
As Mia and her colleagues initially thought, the majority of Pinterest’s emissions are from scope 3—including the emissions from cloud computing that make their platform possible. So, in 2023, she and the team prioritized the efficiency of Pinterest’s use of AWS infrastructure and launched technology projects to ensure intelligent use of compute resources, storage, and networking. They also worked to reduce the number of AWS servers required to power Pinterest around the world.
Specific projects to improve infrastructure efficiency included applying appropriate retention policies to reduce stored data, migrating a portion of Pinterest’s compute instances to AWS’s energy-efficient, general-purpose processor, and right-sizing such instances across the rest of Pinterest’s infrastructure.
“I love this project because it was driven out of the engineering organization, and the migration delivered performance improvements, plus cost and carbon savings.”
Mia Ketterling,
Global Sustainability Lead at Pinterest
To better understand the aggregate impact of this work, they conducted an in-depth analysis of one important workload. Due to improved performance and lower energy intensity, they achieved a 62% reduction in carbon emissions per query. Read more about this work and its impact here.
Watershed helped Mia monitor how Pinterest’s engagement with AWS and its engineering efficiency projects drove down the company’s overall scope 3 emissions. The outsized impact of this AWS initiative helped lay the groundwork for future efforts to reduce Pinterest’s scope 3 emissions.
Using Watershed, Mia and the team at Pinterest have achieved significant milestones, including their 100% renewable energy goal and setting science-based emissions reduction targets. Mia's leadership and the company's commitment to sustainability position Pinterest as a responsible corporate citizen and industry leader in integrating sustainability into core business practices.
“I’ve sat through and received proposals from my fair share of carbon accounting and consulting services. Compared to what Watershed can offer versus the rest of the market, it’s a no-brainer.”
Mia Ketterling,
Global Sustainability Lead at Pinterest