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Greening the Golden State
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Environmentally Preferable
Purchasing Manual
Nothing in the title, "Enviromentally Preferable Purchasing Best
Practices Manual," suggests that this collection will be a best seller.
But it should be. Everything you want to know about buying green is
contained in its web pages, clearly organized, easy to use and -unusual
for any sort of manual -highly readable. No long-winded bureaucratese that
goes on and on and never makes a point here. Instead, you are encouraged
to read more because a wealth of information is presented in
straightforward, plain English.
Designed by a task force that includes several state agencies and
co-managed by representatives from the California Integrated Waste
Management Board and the Procurement Division of the Department of
General Services, the manual is a labor of ingenuity and intelligence. Kimya Lambert, Integrated Waste Management Specialist, and one of the two
co-managers of the project, says, "The Environmentally Preferable
Purchasing law, AB 498, called for the development of a best practices
manual for state employees. The manual assists purchasing officials and
specification writers who might have limited environmental backgrounds. It
is intended to make it easier to make the right choices when making
purchasing decisions."
And that it does. The manual's introduction is a solid primer on how and
why to buy green that is as relevant for a general consumer as a
government procurement officer. Eleven categories, such as building
maintenance, medical supplies, and vehicles and transportation, rule the
manual. Each category is divided into sections -42 in all. The building
maintenance category, for example, includes sections on carpet, paint and
pest management. Each section begins with an introduction that highlights
the commodity's primary environmental and health issues. Further sections
explain these issues in more dtail and summarize pertinent California
and federal legislation, performance features, availability of products,
and cost considerations.
Each section then turns to topics that will primarily interest government
procurement officers: product specifications; tips for writing
specifications, including sample language; vendors and other sources for
products; and success stories in which individuals and entities have used
environmentally preferable products.
"We made sure we got experts on air, water, waste management, and toxics
is-sues to write and review the sections," Lambert says. "We took a
cross-media approach in which we circulated each section to get input from
other reviewers. For example, I might know about recycled copier paper,
but I'm not the authority on chlorine-free paper." While it is easy to see
how an undertaking involving over 100 people from16 state entities,
including input from local government, could take years to produce, 38 of
the 42 sections have been submitted to the management team, and 32 are
already online after less than two years of work.
This government-produced manual for the environmentally aware-or those who
want to be-is available free and
online.
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