Who is the largest single U.S. consumer, one of the largest worldwide consumers, and a supporter of environmentally friendly products and services? Answer: the U.S. government. With $350 billion in annual spending, it is no surprise that the federal government makes a big impact with their massive purchasing power. Currently federal laws and executive orders require factoring in environmental considerations and Established in 1993, the EPP is a program set up by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It assesses green products and services, provides tools helpful for green purchasing, lists governmental policies and standards, and supplies costs and benefits of green choices. Although this is a loose restriction, there is a lot of good that the EPP Program can do if they wisely leverage the government’s massive buying power to stimulate the green market. Fortunately, there has been a great deal of news about government initiatives promoting clean technology and renewable energy. What has been less publicized is how the government is supporting green products and services through their purchasing power.
Evaluation of Products and Services
The Program evaluates products and services that “have a lesser or reduced effect on human health and the environment when compared with competing products or services that serve the same purpose”. These “environmentally preferable” choices consider not only the final good itself but also the raw materials used, manufacturing process, packaging, means of distribution, use of product or service, how it operates, required maintenance, and means of disposal. One can see that if the Program works as it was designed, environmental impacts will start to diminish as truly environmentally friendly products and services gain more and more support.
Green Purchasing Tool
A variety of tools have been developed to aid in purchasing environmentally preferable products. There are product-specific databases with environmental information, training on purchasing green products, and calculators that determine the benefits of recycled content or energy efficient products. In addition to these instruments, the EPP Program also offers product specific tools for industries such as building and construction, cleaning and electronics. For continued guidance, the Program publishes guides, reports and newsletters to further improve purchasing practices.
Achieving Environmental Goals
Buying patterns are generally based on factors such as price, performance, safety and health. The aim of EPP is to add environmental impact to that list of deciding factors to help prevent waste and pollution. Since buying green could take many different forms, the EPP Program uses five guiding principles to help identify the preferred products. They include consideration of environment + price + performance, prevention of pollution, lifecycle of multiple environmental attributes, environmental impacts, and environmental performance.
Adhering to these guidelines, the Program also uses the help of other governmental programs to evaluate green products and services. For instance, the Department of Agriculture approves biobased products. The Department of Energy’s ENERGY STAR program qualifies energy efficient products. EPA’s Comprehensive Procurement Guideline program identifies recycled content products. EPA’s Design for the Environment helps with safer chemical products and EPA’s WaterSense program designates water efficient products. In addition, the Federal Environmental Executive Office has compiled a list of recommendations identifying products with desirable environmental attributes. With this collaboration of various agencies, environmentally preferable purchasing will help the EPA reach their various goals in recycling, reducing waste, and promoting more environmentally friendly products.
