Trinity University Green Purchasing as defined by NAEP (National Association of Educational Procurement)

Definition:

We are pleased to announce that after an intense series of studies NAEP is pleased to put forth the following definition of green purchasing as an effort to create a common lexicon for our profession. We invite your comments and discussion.

Green Purchasing is the method wherein environmental and social considerations are taken with equal weight to the price, availability and performance criteria that colleges and universities use to make purchasing decisions.

Green purchasing is a serious consideration of supply chain management.

Green Purchasing is also known as “environmentally preferred purchasing (EPP), green procurement, affirmative procurement, eco-procurement, and environmentally responsible purchasing” particularly within the US Federal government agencies.

Green Purchasing minimizes negative environmental and social effects through the use of environmentally friendly products.
 
Green purchasing attempts to identify and reduce environmental impact and to maximize resource efficiency. 

The following topics are common considerations to effective green purchasing efforts:
Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) Perspective

• Looking at costs beyond the purchase price. e.g. Upstream production costs and environmental considerations, maintenance, risk, training, replacement, related tangible and intangible elements.
• Considering costs environmental and social impacts over the lifetime of a product or service (raw material extraction, manufacturing, packaging, transport, energy consumption, maintenance, and disposal). See Figure 1

Pollution Prevention

• Avoiding the creation of wastes from the start of a process to manufacture the goods.
• Reducing or eliminating toxicity, air and water emissions.
• Preventing transfer of pollution from one environmental medium (air, water, or land) to another.
• Includes "source reduction," and "waste reduction," which prevent the creation of wastes rather than manage them after they are created. (USEPA Pollution Prevention-P2 Definition)

Resource Efficiency

• Giving preference to reusable content and recycled materials over virgin materials, as well as to conserving water and energy.

Figure 1 (Life-cycle model for products and services)

Green Purchasing Continued; Additional Insight (e.g. this can be added to above):
Green purchasing frequently may include:

• the acquisition of recycled content products;
• environmentally preferable products and services;
• bio-based products;
• energy- and water-efficient products;
• alternately fueled vehicles;
• products using renewable energy;
• alternatives to hazardous or toxic chemicals as well as non-ozone depleting substances, and
• products containing alternatives to certain priority chemicals.

In the past, many individuals thought of Purchasing and Supply Chain Management (SCM) as a business function with only bottom-line financial considerations. However, for the past 20+ years many purchasing and supply chain professionals have worked to link purchasing and SCM with environmental science and management (as well as other academic disciplines) by researching (and applying) the impacts that purchasing and SCM have on social, economic and environmental processes and systems.
National and international researchers have been able to investigate all aspects of global marketplace behavior by going into the field to research the complete life cycle analysis (LCA) of many products and services (from raw material extraction, to packaging, shipping, transportation, use/application, disposal and reuse). By understanding and researching purchasing and the supply chain in this way, purchasing and supply chain professionals hope to demonstrate and apply the benefits of integrating social, ethical and environmental indicators and criteria upstream (where purchasing sourcing decisions are made), which have multiple downstream impacts (including better policy and technological enhancements as well as identifying pollution and waste prevention opportunities and discoveries).
Research in this area has consistently shown that professional purchasers and SCM managers who consider environmentally preferable criteria in the procurement process (or early in the supply chain sequence) have the power to reduce or even eliminate waste and environmental impacts as well as reduce costs. In fact, global experience and examples show how environmentally preferable criteria early in the procurement process improve the organizations’ environmental performance, while addressing ethics, social regeneration and economic concerns.
In addition to improved environmental performance, many ‘green’ products work as well or better than traditional products and can even save money. Switching to safer cleaning products, for example, can reduce incidents of allergic reactions, asthma, burns, eye damage, major organ damage, and cancer connected with the hazardous chemicals used in many traditional cleaning products. Buying 100 percent recycled-content paper can reduce energy use by 44 percent, decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 37 percent, cut solid waste emissions in half, decrease water use by 50 percent, and practically eliminate wood use. Similarly, energy-efficient vehicles and renewable energy cut greenhouse gas emissions and harmful air pollutants while lessening our dependence on imported oil. Overall, the implementation and integration of green purchasing concepts constitutes a system-wide process reform that collectively contributes to an organization’s reduction in ecological footprint (cumulative associated ownership to global ecological damage stemming from a demand for natural resource to sustain economic and social balance).
Green purchasing can allow an organization to offset financial and environmental risk, rather than inheriting it from their suppliers. Alternatively, organizations may want to involve their suppliers at the design stage or develop a network to pre-qualify suppliers that have responsible environmental management. Assessments and benchmarking can aid an organization with the process. Green purchasing can bring important benefits for its practitioners: risk management, eco-efficiency, stronger supplier relationships, and improvements in environmental performance, just as a start.
We would like to thank everyone in higher education procurement for their contributions in this definition process.  The effort to codify and simplify a definition will pay dividends for all of us in higher education.