Environmentally responsible or ‘green’ procurement is the selection of products and services that minimize environmental impacts. It requires a company or organization to carry out an assessment of the environmental consequences of a product at all the various stages of its lifecycle. This means considering the costs of securing raw materials, and manufacturing, transporting, storing, handling, using and disposing of the product.
Green procurement is rooted in the principle of pollution prevention, which strives to eliminate or to reduce risks to human health and the environment. It means evaluating purchases based on a variety of criteria, ranging from the necessity of the purchase in the first place to the options available for its eventual disposal.
Consumers, investors, shareholders and regulatory agencies are increasingly demanding that organizations behave in an environmentally responsible manner. Practising green procurement demonstrates an organization’s commitment to considering and minimizing the environmental consequences of its activities. It thus makes both environmental and economic sense.
Green products are generally produced in a manner that consumes less natural resources or uses them more sustainably, as with sustainable forestry. They may involve less energy in their manufacture and may consume less energy when being used, and they generally contain fewer hazardous or toxic materials.
Green products are also generally designed with the intention of reducing the amount of waste created. For example, they may contain recycled material or use less packaging, and the supplier may operate a ‘take-back’ program.
Green procurement can also offer cost savings. In particular, buying ‘green’ usually involves products that are easily recycled, last longer or produce less waste. Money is therefore saved on waste disposal. In addition, green products generally require fewer resources to manufacture and operate, so savings can be made on energy, water, fuel and other natural resources.
One might think that buying green is the easiest criterion of the spend triumvirate to meet now that we have “organic” and “local” food and “eco-friendly” labeling and “energy-star” standards, but it is, in fact, the most challenging criterion! A food product does not necessarily have a low carbon footprint just because it is “organic” or “local”; just because a product is “eco-friendly” when used, does not mean that it’s production process was “eco-friendly”; and just because a product is “energy-star” compliant does not mean that it will have the best overall energy utilization.
Buying local produce makes sense during the fall harvest season, because you’re eliminating the carbon footprint that accompanies transportation, but it does not make sense in the spring when all the product is coming from greenhouses. Why? The energy footprint associated with a greenhouse often has a much higher carbon footprint than transporting products by land from the opposite hemisphere. Eco-friendly detergent is much better than hazardous bleach, but if it’s been produced in a factory that (still) uses a process that generates toxic chemicals as byproducts, it’s not very eco-friendly at all. And your average energy-star desktop workstation still consumes 80+ watts of power, which really adds up if your employees never turn them off. If all your employees are doing is word-processing and internet purchasing, they could be using a thin-client that only consumes 4W of power when in use, and a fraction of a watt in standby mode, hosted on a multi-core modern server that supports automatic power-down of processors, drives, and power supplies when utilization drops beyond a certain threshold.
Benefits of Green Procurement
Before an organization can go green, it has to want to go green. Why should an organization want to be green? Various benefits are listed
- Brand Image – An organization that has gone green is seen as a good corporate citizen. This increases its image in the eyes of the public.
- Customer Satisfaction – An organization that goes green in response to customer concerns increases its levels of customer satisfaction, a key point in customer retention.
- Reduced Risk – Not only is any company that does not go green risking a run in with the law by failing to comply with green regulations, which are multiplying at the rate of Fibonacci’s rabbits around the world, but it is also maintaining more liability than it needs to. Hazardous chemicals are just accidents, and lawsuits, waiting to happen. With green purchasing, you can offset financial and environmental risk, rather than just inheriting it from your suppliers.
- Cost Reduction – Going green doesn’t cost more. Most of the time it actually saves money, especially when the new products use less energy, generate less waste, and last longer. Plus, sometimes green products work better than their toxic counterparts!
Making an Impact
The reason that green procurement is so complex is that there’s no single rule-of-thumb that you can apply in every situation.
IT
Buy computers, peripherals, copiers, and related electronics that are
- energy efficient – as it often costs more to power a computer over its useful life-cycle than it costs to buy it
- free of hazardous materials – because, even today, too many pieces of electronic equipment that contain hazardous materials end up in landfills and taint local water supplies
- repairable – and made of modular components that can easily be swapped out when they fail so you don’t have to replace whole systems until they reach the end of their useful life
- highly recyclable – and designed to be easily disassembled and recycled
- returnable to the manufacturer under an end-of-life program – who will then see that the component is refurbished or recycled
Office Supplies
Buy paper and cardboard that is
- high in recycled content – as this saves trees, and makes the tree-huggers very happy
- recyclable – as this saves more trees, and makes the tree-huggers even happier
Buy office supplies that are
- free of hazardous materials – because your stapler doesn’t need to contain toxic chemicals!
- high quality and have a long life span – because it’s not a cheap hole-punch if you have to buy a new one every month
- made primarily of recyclable materials – as everything we make wears out eventually
Buy office furniture that is
- free of hazardous materials
Buildings and Maintenance
Buy cleaning supplies that are
- non-toxic
- bio-based
- available in concentrate form – as this reduces packaging requirements and the transportation-component of the carbon footprint
