The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said “Green purchasing is about buying products and services that have a reduced impact on human health and the environment compared to other products and services serving the same purpose.”
Green purchasing — also known as sustainable procurement or eco-friendly purchasing—involves considering the entire lifecycle of a product or service, from production to disposal, and evaluating its environmental impact in terms of energy efficiency, waste reduction, and the use of renewable resources. The goal of green purchasing is to promote sustainability and reduce negative environmental impacts, while still meeting the government agency’s needs and goals.
The first city in the United States to launch a green purchasing program was the City of Portland in 1996. Portland established a sustainable procurement program with the goal of reducing the city’s environmental impact, which included promoting sustainability through its purchasing practices. Since then, many other cities across the United States have followed suit and implemented their own green purchasing programs.
In 2003, the City of Seattle launched its Green Purchasing Program to consider environmental factors when making purchasing decisions and to prioritize the purchase of products and services that have a reduced environmental impact.
Since then, Seattle has been committed to promoting environmental responsibility and reducing greenhouse gas emissions through its purchasing activities, encompassing goods, materials, services, and capital improvements. As a collaborative effort among various city departments, the program’s staff work together to develop strategies, review outcomes, and identify opportunities for market transformation, while also creating specifications and selection criteria as well as educating vendors and end-users.
The Green Purchasing Program is aligned with several of Seattle’s policies and goals and offers tools for city departments to set an example for local citizens, businesses, and other governmental agencies.
Let’s have a look at what Seattle has been doing to help the environment from a public procurement perspective:
For instance, there is the Environmental Management Program (EMP), a comprehensive program designed to manage the environmental impacts of city operations, reduce Seattle’s carbon footprint, and promote sustainable practices. The EMP established an environmentally responsible purchasing program “to expand and promote the City’s use of environmentally preferable products and services.”
Being an environmentally responsible purchasing city means that its departments and agencies need to prioritize and procure environmentally preferable products and services (which are defined as products and services that have a lower impact on the environment than conventional alternatives), use sustainable packaging in procurement, and work with suppliers who have strong environmental and social sustainability practices.
In addition, former Mayor Gregory J. Nickels delivered the Executive Order for Paper Waste Prevention in order to reduce paper use, increase recycling, and purchase environmentally preferable paper. As it was said in the Executive Order, it “directs City departments to use double-sided printing and copying, adopt technologies and adjustments that eliminate the need to print unnecessarily and to be selective about what is printed with a target of reducing the City’s paper purchasing.”
In 2011, Seattle adopted a Sustainable Buildings and Sites Policy for municipal facilities “to maximize the environmental quality, economic vitality, and social health of [the] city through the design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation, and decommissioning of [its] buildings and sites.”
Years later, Seattle presented its Sustainable Purchasing Policy, recognizing that “the goods and services the City purchases have inherent social, human, health, environmental and economic impacts and that the City should make purchasing decisions that embody and promote the City’s commitment to Zero Waste and sustainability”. This policy aimed to increase the percentage of purchased materials, goods and services that best align with the city’s environmental sustainability, social equity, and fiscal goals; incorporate sustainability standards into purchasing decisions; encourage vendors to promote goods and services offered that are most suited to the Seattle’s sustainability principles and zero waste goals; and encourage city departments and partner agencies to purchase products made from locally recycled materials.
It has also launched the Recycled Content Product Procurement Program to substantially increase the procurement of reusable products, recycled content products, and recyclable products; target procurement of products made from recycled materials; adopt content standards for recycled content and recyclable products for use in procurement programs; and provide the director of the program with the necessary authority to adopt preferential purchasing policies for recycled content and recyclable products, including price preferences.
We know of another possible solution that can aid the environment for cities like Seattle. The United Nations Brundtland Commission defines sustainability as “meeting the present needs while ensuring that future generations can fulfill their own needs”. Glass Commerce, our primary product, enables local governments to promote their local economy by redirecting small purchases to local businesses, helping them to decrease their collective carbon footprint and encouraging local economic growth.
Are you curious to learn more about Seattle’s green purchasing policies? Are you interested in finding out how you can contribute to making your city more sustainable through public procurement? Please feel free to reach out to us and we will be more than happy to provide guidance!
This blog was written by Gisela Montes, GovTech Community Lead at Glass.