In its glory days, nobody ever thought eBay would hit a slump — especially not in a recession when everybody needs a good deal or wants to unload stuff and raise cash. But eBay did, slump that is, in recent months. And with profits sinking and its market share shrinking, the company’s recasting its online presence: It’s going green.

Yes, you heard right. eBay’s now attempting to boost its online business by pushing the environmentally friendly nature inherent in its business model.

With its new site — green.ebay.com — users are incessantly reminded of how environmentally conscious buying used stuff is.

Take a leather handbag, for instance. The fact that an animal gave its life once to provide humans with an attractive, durable and upscale sack to carry things around in shouldn’t be wasted or taken for granted.

Sell (or buy) that bag, give it another life and you’ve essentially “recycled” – albeit paying for the privilege. (That’s because with eBay, everybody pays — the buyer pays the item’s owner, who in turn pays eBay to be allowed to sell on the site.) It’s a win-win, or a lose-lose, depending on how you look at it. For everybody but eBay, that is.

This new “hub,” as eBay likes to call its site, collects items for sale that eBay “qualifies” as green.

They could be pre-owned or sustainable, such as a recycled barn wood picture frame from upstate New York (just $14.99 plus shipping if you buy it now!)  or a reusable, bpa-free sandwich bag called a “snack taxi” which eliminates the need for disposable zip lock bags most folks use ($9.99 buy it now price, plus shipping and handling.)

eBay hired Cooler,  a company that calculates carbon footprints, to determine how much carbon shoppers save by buying something used instead of new. They say that the leather handbag, for example, saves as much energy as a flight from London to Paris.

They’re also using some competition and a $10,000 prize as lure folks to the new site. Via eBay’s “Green Team Challenge,” now through Earth Day (April 22), you can  join the eBay’s Green Team and “take the challenge,” that amounts to protecting an acre of forest in your name in one of three places.

All you have to do is tell eBay where, and in exchange they get to send you lots of e-mail soliciting your future business.

The online auction site, once the darling of Web-based business, is doing what many mature businesses do when the public begins to grow weary of its products or services: It’s changing how it positions the company to take advantage of customer trends and preferences.

With “green” behavior becoming fashionable and politically most correct, washing your business — or maybe just your Web site — in green likely can’t hurt.

It is nothing new for companies to pick something they already do — selling used products, in eBay’s case — and “rewrap it in nice green marketing,” said Casey Harrell, who analyzes the information technology sector at Greenpeace.

Dubbed “greenwashing,” wrapping your business in the irreproachable cloak of environmental conservatism seems to have struck a chord with businesses –- even if many business owners would be likely to paint environmental conservationists as “tree huggers” offline.

Does your business tout its “green” cred online? What’s the most far-fetched “green” business claim you’ve heard recently?

Tags: Ebay, green, Greenpeace, marketing, technology