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By Racquel Palmese

California’s 500-plus state government agencies purchase an average of $9 billion a year in products and services. From March 2007 to March 2008, that figure swelled to almost $11 billion with some major building projects underway; the next year, when the recession began, it shrunk to $8 billion.

While the 2009 figures (March 2009 – March 2010) statistics are not yet available, the figure will probably be lower. State officials contacted by Green Technology editors estimate that due to the Governor’s Executive Order S-09-09, which called for a 15 percent across-the-board reduction in future spending on contracts and purchases, statewide purchasing will probably be reduced to somewhere in the neighborhood of $7.5 billion this year. “That’s still a lot of pencils and light bulbs,” quipped a state official. Indeed, the state’s 237,304 employees (as of December, 2009) still need to purchase products to clean their buildings, replace worn out furniture and acquire scores of other items needed to run their agencies.

The state’s Public Contract Code, Section 124-12404 mandates Environmentally Preferable Purchasing (EPP), or the “acquisition of goods and services that have a lesser or reduced effect on human health and the environment when compared with competing goods or services that serve the same purpose. This comparison shall take into consideration, to the extent feasible, raw materials acquisition, production, manufacturing, packaging, distribution, reuse, operation, maintenance, disposal, energy efficiency, product performance, durability, safety, the needs of the purchaser, and cost.”

Tracking the implementation of the EPP mandate is difficult, and there is widespread acknowledgement that there is a much needed component of educating state purchasing agents on buying green that is still being developed. Also, locating green products that are both cost effective and that are effective in their uses is a daunting challenge.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road – Local Green Purchasing

The state EPP law does not extend to purchasing done by cities, counties or other local entities. But it is in many of California’s local jurisdictions that the pathway to green buying is being carved. 

Some categories of products, such as copy paper, light bulbs and carpeting, have tried and true green alternatives that have been in place for years. Others, such as non-plastic packing materials and some electronics are now coming into the marketplace. 

A leader in local green purchasing in California is the City of Palo Alto, which spends about $16.5 million a year on materials and supplies. Palo Alto Green Procurement Specialist Julie Weiss started the city’s EPP program about 2-1/2 years ago. She has found that putting green specifications directly into contracts shifts the load to manufacturers, and products arrive with green attributes already in place. For example, the specification for computer equipment is that it must meet EPEAT standards.  EPEAT helps purchasers select things like desktop and laptop computers and monitors that meet a set of environmental performance criteria and are registered in three different categories of “greenness.”

“We order copiers that are preset to print double sided, and we are also working with Hewlett Packard to reduce packaging,” says Weiss. “HP agreed to eliminate plastics for packing small computers, substituting molded paper product instead, which is recyclable. We’re looking to reduce plastics as much as we can because of marine litter. HP will be taking this beyond Palo Alto for their other customers.”

It’s not always stuff, she said, it’s also services. “Our pest control company has improved since we began using them. We have some of the strictest standards for pest control products, which must be EcoWise certified. We’ve been using green custodial products for a number of years. No spray pesticides, we use traps to reduce toxicity for dealing with ants. At first our facilities manager was throwing a wary eye my way, but now he’s onboard. This organization prevents pests rather than spraying to eliminate them. Initially the service cost was a little higher, but now we’ve actually reduced our service level because we need to have less service. We’re not putting out rodent baits that cause poisoning to raptors or potential harm to kids.”

Weiss’ battle plan includes increasing the use of recycled paper and using less paper. “We look at things like how are we reducing the toxicity of the products we use? What are we telling vendors to do? What are we doing operationally? We’re also requiring vendors to be certified as a green business through the Association of Bay Area Governments. We use the Santa Clara green business program, which helps business get to a certain level of environmental performance in things like hazardous waste and green procurement policies.”

On Weiss’ list of 13 approved green products and services are energy purchases, pest control, graphic design services and paper. Products currently in the process of being greened include landscaping services, streetlights and batteries. In the future she will look at cafeteria supplies and other office supplies.

“I welcome the opportunity to fulfill these mandates,” she says. “There are always opportunities to solve problems in a better way. It doesn’t always cost more, it’s just a decision to get into new habits. When you do that you reduce maintenance costs and energy costs and waste disposal costs. There are plenty of opportunities to get into green purchasing that will not break the bank.”

A Green Purchasing Ordinance

San Francisco city and county have had a green purchasing program for over 20 years, but the ordinances mandating it were harmonized and strengthened in 2005 with its Precautionary Purchasing Ordinance, which lists 9 categories considered priorities by the San Francisco Department of the Environment Green Purchasing Program. They include plastic and compostable bags, carpet, computer servers, dairy products and food containers. The listing gives the rationale for inclusion on the list and what the key environmental and health issues are relating to each category of product. 

“Over the years we have gradually committed ourselves to a broader and broader range of green products,” says Chris Geiger, manager of the green purchasing program. “Sometimes there are standards and eco labels available and sometimes not. Sometimes we develop our own specs in consultation with other agencies and staff.”

In 1999, a pilot program was initiated which analyzed chemical products used by the city, with the goal of developing a prioritization based on hazards of each product. A specification to purchase less hazardous products was then developed. “We identified those products and did field testing,” says Geiger. “It’s always nice when the products work well. Most of them worked as well as the traditional products they were replacing, but not all. For example, we couldn’t find a good replacement for electronic contact cleaners, which are coil cleaners for heating and cooling systems.”

By 2000, San Francisco was able to identify green alternatives for most product categories, and at that time they began working on the Precautionary Purchasing Ordinance. “We wanted to make sure we were looking at potential problems,” says Geiger, “not necessarily banning everything under the sun. More like looking forward and minimizing harm.”

A list of approved products was developed. Sometimes the products were chosen because they were certified with standards rating systems approved by San Francisco, such as Green Seal 37 environmental standards for janitorial products, or EPEAT Gold, the organization’s highest rating.  “We were the first city in the country to do that,” says Geiger. “Our approved product catalog is undergoing a huge improvement and will be updated and online in a few months. We have over 1,000 green products in the catalog right now, and many more are suggested.”

There are over 80 departments and other entities with purchasing capability in San Francisco, and Geiger says a lot of staff are interested in buying green. While the green purchasing program is getting “reasonably good buy-in,” getting data back from the field on the amount of green products being purchased is a challenge.

“We don’t have a good method to get reports back, and so far we’re depending on vendor reports, he said. “We know there has been a 500 percent increase in green janitorial products purchased. There has also been a good response on computers and paper. It’s a little more difficult with lamps because there are thousands of products, and with specialty cleaning products there are performance issues.”

Besides getting data on implementation, ferreting out the best of the eco labels has been a challenge for the green purchasing program. “There is such a  proliferation of certifying organizations,” he says.

Qualifying the rating organizations can be difficult. For example, “as good as Energy Star is [for rating energy efficient appliances], for a long time no one was checking [the information sent in by companies seeking certification]. They’ve done a lot of good, and they’re making a big change now to catch cheaters. EPEAT was really helpful for computer products because if a manufacturer would try to cheat, their name would be posted on the website.”

Getting Started

The County of Santa Clara Board of Supervisors adopted an EPP policy in September of 2009, and while the program is very new, Assistant Director of Procurement Roslyn Fuller says the county has already started its implementation phase. “There are two tiers to the program,” she says. “In Tier 1 we’re targeting green cleaning products, compost and mulch, lubricating oils,  janitorial products and rechargeable batteries. Tier 2, which will start in October, will include office supplies, printing products, appliances, lighting, plastic, lumber and paint. We’ve already started addressing some items in Tier 2 with a contract for Energy Star and we’ve started looking at office supplies.”

Her enthusiasm has helped coalesce other stakeholders. “We’re taking a holistic approach to a green EPP policy,” she says, “getting stakeholders involved at the beginning, putting products in place. We work with the stakeholders associated with the commodities to get their help making the decision on what products to implement. We have a stakeholder’s team that is piloting and testing certain products. I think that they will end up using the products in the long term because they were in on it from the beginning.”

Mixed Levels of Success

By 1999, the City of Santa Monica was already making history as green electricity began powering all its municipal facilities. Now, in an aggressive program of green purchasing, about 10 percent of the city’s $400 million a year purchasing budget is spent on green products and services.

“This includes energy, vehicles, commodities,” says Karl Bruskotter, environmental programs analyst in charge of green purchasing for Santa Monica.  “We’re talking about tens of millions of dollars spent on green products already.”

“We call it sustainable procurement,” he says, but with a limited staff to green a large budget, “there’s only so much time in a day for what we can get done, so we have to think about what things we buy that have the biggest negative impacts on the environment or health, what gives us the biggest opportunities to green. We came up with a list of products and services that we want to make our focus, and we work that list with other cities like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and with the Responsible Purchasing Network to see if we’re going in the right direction.

“We find out that we can buy copy paper with recycled content that’s made at a facility that uses green energy, we look at price and availability and whether it will perform like we want it to. Then we buy it.”

But, says Bruskotter, it doesn’t always work out that way. “We’re always in mixed levels of success. If we say copy paper, we have greened that. But if we look at graffiti remover, we do our best. We have some people using a less toxic remover, but it’s not everyone in the city. We might catch a group using something really nasty.”

Other things that have proved elusive to Bruskotter include color printer cartridges. He says that a lot of jurisdictions have had success and saved money with remanufactured toner cartridges, but because of concerns and confusion within the city’s information systems division, “we haven’t had any success.  We have to pull teeth. There’s only so much time in a day. I pushed the toner cartridge hard, and I even found a credible vendor that makes a quality product, but still it didn’t seem to work out.”

Would it help if the city passed an ordinance, the way San Francisco has? Perhaps, Bruskotter says, but Santa Monica doesn’t pass ordinances specifically for government purchasing. “There’s no way to mandate our divisions to buy green,” he said. “We are in the process of putting a sustainable procurement policy together and developing a list of materials and products and services for user guides for city staff.”

The guides should be ready by mid-year and will contain 35 or 40 products ranging from paper towels and copy paper to furniture, carpet, lighting, cleaning products, office equipment – and perhaps toner cartridges. Santa Monica is also using LEED EB [the U.S. Green Building Council’s rating system for existing buildings] standards, which include points for specific products that are certified under various rating systems.

Educating city staff is at the top of the list when it comes to implementing green procurement. “There’s a lot of information out there, says Bruskotter, “and the staff may want to be green, but they don’t want to read a 40-page manual, they just want to know what the recommendations are. “

A Powerful Message to Manufacturers

When a city like Los Angeles, with commodity purchases of over $500 million a year, institutes an EPP policy and begins to demand green products, it opens the door for manufacturers who produce green products to sell to the city and creates incentive for manufactures who don’t make sustainable products to get serious about greening their product lines. Los Angeles issues over 100,000 purchase orders annually, requested by more than 3,000 staff in about 40 different city departments.

The city’s EPP program, backed strongly by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Councilmember Greig Smith, encourages the procurement of environmentally friendly products as part of a policy written into a city ordinance, the Los Angeles Administrative Code. Gerald St. Onge, procurement supervisor for the city, says, “Originally it was a recycling ordinance and now it’s an EPP ordinance that directs all city departments, when they go out to bid for commodities, to develop specs that include EPP considerations, such as products that contain recycled content, are biodegradable, have low toxicity levels and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Their ultimate disposal is considered – there is a whole list of guidelines.”

Los Angeles’ specifications include products certified by major groups like Green Seal, Energy Star and EPEAT. These specifications apply to formal contracts over $25,000. When a city department has a need for things like office supplies, these can be electronically procured through the city’s website. Many product categories are limited to green products. “Office supplies, janitorial supplies – we are trying to grab the low hanging fruit,” says St. Onge. 

Los Angeles is now in the process of seeking LEED certification for all its new and existing buildings. “The approach we are taking,” he says, “is that in order to get LEED credits for existing buildings, we must adhere to the LEED specifications, which require products certified by Green Seal, EcoLogo and others. So it’s kind of a workaround.”

Like those in other cities and counties, the Los Angeles green purchasing program is new, with the ordinance several years in the making but only written into the code in November, 2009. “When we see a contract we can jump on, we stop and jump on it,” says St. Onge, “and make sure that it is rewritten to include green specs. It’s kind of a long process, there’s a lot of training to do, educating the procurement people, getting the word out, finding like products that actually perform equal to other products. A consideration is the budgetary part of it, that commodities have green replacements that are comparable price-wise.”

St. Onge feels that a central clearing house where cities could trade information on EPP would be helpful “We belong to the National Institute of Governmental Purchasing,” he says, and they have a green section. We can put out requests for information and it starts a green thread that gets sent back and forth among the members. This helps with a major challenge faced by local green procurement programs – coming up with specifications.

“We don’t have the in-house expertise, testing laboratories.” says St. Onge. “When a manufacturer makes a claim that their product is green or goes through a certifying party that is not widely recognized, is it really the best product we can get?”

Educating the Purchasers

To help educate Los Angeles city purchasers, there are vendor fairs and outreach sessions attended by vendors who would like to do business with the city. “Often they are new vendors who are coming to the city,” says St. Onge. “We go through the actual process of the bidding and registering. We also let them know about this new ordinance, that the city is anxious to procure green products and it’s much better if their products are certified by recognized organizations.”

To help meet these challenges, groups like the Green Purchasing Institute provide hands-on technical support to local governments on EPP issues, including the development of environmental purchasing policies, bid specifications, contract language and outreach materials.

Alicia Culver, GPI founder and executive director, says that “municipalities can save money when products such as remanufactured toner cartridges have a lower upfront cost, or when products offer energy and water savings, have a longer expected life, such as with high-performance fluorescent and LED lighting equipment, or when they reduce maintenance costs in other ways.

“Many municipalities are buying locally sourced products, such as food or manufactured goods, as part of their EPP or sustainable purchasing programs,” she continues. “This contributes to their tax base, which is critically important now. Green purchasing is more important now than ever, because it can save municipalities money either in the short term or over time. Environmentally preferable products often represent the best value, because they can substantially lower energy, maintenance and disposal costs.”

U.S. Communities is a national non-profit government purchasing group that creates contracts for local agencies to use. Connie Kuranko, the program manager for the organization’s Green  Initiative agrees. “We’ve always advocated that you can purchase green and save money,” she says. “I’m getting a lot more requests for price comparisons.

“We give them buying power,” says Kuranko, “so any little school district or any non-profit can get the same buying power of an L.A. County.” Through it’s Go Green Program, U.S. Communities has created a source for local government to access and buy green products. “We’re putting more green core lists into our contracts,” says Kuranko, “so we can help green companies put more products out there.”

Another good source of information is Cool California, says Dana Papke, air pollution specialist for the California Air Resources Board (ARB) and spokesperson for Cool California, a partnership between ARB, the Berkeley Institute of the Environment, Next 10 and the California Public Utilities Commission. Cool California produces the Local Government Toolkit, which helps local governments “cut their costs while reducing their environmental impact. There are a number of strategies for EPP and what cities and counties can do to adopt procurement policies,” she says. One of them is to use California’s EPP Best Practices Manual.

“The manual is currently undergoing a major upgrade to include more specific information for government purchasers,” says Jeffrey Young, Deputy Director-Public Affairs for the California Department of General Services. It contains information on the types of products that are environmentally friendly in many categories, but it does not recommend specific products, which according to several people interviewed for this article, leaves government workers with a lot of information about why they should buy green, but few leads as to how to accomplish it.

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