Greener Products
Institutional/Professional Purchaser
- Making a Difference
- Benefits
- A Life-Cycle Approach
- Eco Labels and Standards
- Environmental Claims
- Other EPA Initiatives
- Non–EPA Resources
Making a Difference for Your Organization, Public Health, and the Environment
By purchasing greener products, you will be joining many organizations across the United States that are helping improve public health and the environment. By leveraging your buying power, you will help stimulate market demand for greener products and services. In many cases, institutional purchasers can bring down the cost of purchasing greener products due to the scale of their purchasing.
Benefits
Organizations that purchase greener products experience a range of benefits:
- Improved ability to meet environmental goals
- Improved worker safety and health
- Reduced liabilities
- Reduced health and disposal costs
- Increased availability of environmentally preferable products in the marketplace
A Life-Cycle Approach
Institutional buyers should consider the full array of public health and environmental impacts associated with their products and their supply chain. These include toxic exposures, air pollution, water pollution, climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, natural resource use (e.g., energy, water, materials), waste disposal, and ecosystem damages. To do this, institutional purchasers must consider the public health and environmental impacts over the entire life cycle of a product: from sourcing of raw materials, to manufacturing, packaging, transportation, distribution, retailing, use of the product, and management of it when it is no longer needed (through reuse, repair, recycling, or safe disposal). Different product categories have different public health or environmental "hotspots" of concern. For example, formulated products, such as those used in cleaning and personal care, have a high potential for direct human and environmental exposures, hence the toxicity of the formulated product is of paramount importance. Alternatively, water usage may be the primary concern for lavatory fittings. In these cases, standards that focus on the hotspots of concern may be most appropriate.
Eco-Labels and Standards
Introduction to Eco-Labels and Standards
Scroll through these EPA programs and several standards that EPA helped develop and manage. Click on the logos for more information, and links to greener products and product comparisons.
Environmental Claims
Institutional purchasers should be careful when considering environmental claims about products. Not all greener product claims can be trusted 
. Visit the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) website for its current "Green Guides". Note that the "Green Guides" are currently being revised and updated.
Other EPA Initiatives
Please also see the following EPA websites and the Related Links for additional information about more environmentally sustainable products.
- Institutional purchasers can visit the website for EPA's Environmentally Preferable Purchasing (EPP) Program.
- Institutional purchasers of building or landscaping products might be interested in EPA's Green Homes website or EPA's Greenscapes program.
- Institutional purchasers of electronic equipment might be interested in Plug in to eCycling, an EPA program that promotes opportunities for individuals to donate or recycle electronics through a partnership with leading consumer electronics manufacturers, retailers, and mobile service providers.
- Institutional purchasers interested in learning more about reducing the impact associated with transporting their products, please visit the SmartWay Transport Partnership.
Non–EPA Resources
The Related Links section of this website includes a wide range of other greener product resources including many not developed by EPA.