Green Procurement

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Green procurement – buying environmentally friendly products whenever possible – is one of the easiest strategies to implement at the local level. It can be done incrementally as equipment or supplies are purchased and contracts are renewed. Procurement choices happen at almost every aspect of an organization: transportation, energy supply, water use, packaging, office materials and waste management.

To find out more about how your community can take part in green procurement, look at the Green Procurement Chapter of Planning for a Sustainable Future - A Guide for Local Governments [PDF 4.9 MB, 58 pp].

What You Can Do

Buy green! EPA has a searchable database of product-specific information that can help you with your purchasing. The database includes contract language, specifications, environmental standards and guidelines and lists of vendors that meet these standards. Visit www.epa.gov/epp/tools/index.htm and click on “Database of Environmental Information for Products and Services.”

Success Story:

The Central Purchasing Office for the Commonwealth (State) of Massachusetts developed an Environmentally Preferable Products (EPP) program. Their goals in developing this program were to minimize the environmental impacts of the products they purchased, promote private companies developing environmentally-friendly products by creating a demand for their services and become a model for other government programs.

The program offers a wide variety of supplies including cleaning products, office supplies, recycling bins and more. This program allows state agency procurement department to purchase an item or service under the EPP system without having to compete it out. This way, state agencies can shop for what they need with ease in a timely, environmentally-friendly fashion.

Resources
EPA’s Comprehensive Procurement Guidelines Supplier Database