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Publications
Department of the Environment and Heritage, 2003
ISBN 0642 54955 9
Environmental purchasing may seem somewhat daunting to purchasers who are not familiar with it, but it is actually no different from any other form of evaluation done as part of purchasing. Every purchasing officer has taken account of issues such as safety, appropriateness of use, ease of operation or other factors in evaluating products. Environmental purchasing simply adds a new set of criteria for consideration. In all other respects, environmental purchasing should be no different from any other government purchasing.
Departments may begin an environmental purchasing programme by focusing initially on certain types of products or services and expanding to others as they gain experience. Specific Australian Government policy requirements cover the purchase of energy-using office equipment and appliances, so these may be an appropriate place to start. Alternatively, a department may want to start with products purchased in large quantities or products or services with significant environmental impacts.
Many environmental purchasing initiatives begin with paper, often on account of its ubiquity and immediate significance to staff as an obvious environmental issue. Another way to get started is to conduct a risk assessment of the goods and services you purchase, asking which pose greater risks of environmental harm, require energy consumption, demand high levels of resource input, generate difficult or high volume wastes, or could adversely impact human health. You can then target those goods and services before moving on to others with a lower risk profile. This may be accompanied by considerations of cost savings to be made from these purchases. If your agency has an EMS in place or under development, you should be able to borrow and adapt for purchasing the risk assessment method used to determine which environmental aspects of your operations are significant.
As many agencies enter into contracts of several (or more) years duration for major purchasing exercises, it is possible to achieve considerable environmental performance improvements through contract variations, possibly with little or no cost. Telstra has adopted this approach to ensure consistent implementation across the variety of goods and services that they procure.
Environmental checklists prepared as part of the Environmental Purchasing Programme also indicate useful starting places for a departmental programme. (Environmental checklists are discussed in detail later in this Guide.)
If there is no environmental checklist available for the product or service types that you want to buy, you may find useful information elsewhere. Internet searches using key words of the product type, "environment" and "purchasing" can be fruitful. Useful Australian resources include the RMIT "ecospecifier" site (http://www.ecospecifier.org/content/view/full/43), which provides guidance on environmental purchasing of building materials, and Choice magazine (www.choice.com.au), which includes environmental issues in some of its product assessments. Useful overseas sites include: www.epa.gov/opptintr/epp/ and www.pprc.org/pprc/pubs/topics/envpurch.html The Greening of Government website includes a list of further resources and is updated on an ongoing basis: www.deh.gov.au/settlements/government/purchasing/index.html
Departments should ensure that existing purchasing policies do not inadvertently hinder environmental purchasing. For example, unnecessary specifications for high whiteness paper might rule out the purchase of recycled stock.
Sometimes the most environmental solution might involve changing a process or system so that the need for products can be reduced or eliminated. Moving to electronic phone directories or manuals can eliminate the need for many paper copies and frequent supplements. In other cases, system changes may allow use of a different type of product that has less environmental impact.
You may wish to conduct trials of environmentally preferable goods or services to satisfy yourself as to their fitness for purpose and overall Value for Money. Many organisations have taken this approach and often their experiences (and data) can be useful aids to your own environmental purchasing initiatives. For example, your cleaners could trial less hazardous cleaning products for a preliminary assessment of their suitability and value. Many suppliers are more than happy to provide trial samples of their goods or services if this may lead to subsequent business. For more information see: www.deh.gov.au/settlements/government/purchasing/purchasingtrials.html
The Environmental Purchasing Toolkit identifies the types of information that could be requested from suppliers to enable evaluation of the environmental aspects of products obtained through tenders. The size of the order and the nature of potential suppliers should be taken into account when drafting the specification. As an example, on a small printing job, packaging might be a minor issue and it may not make sense to ask printers to supply extensive information on the packaging they use. On the other hand, when developing a specification for large print orders, it is reasonable to ask the printers to provide information on how the printed material will be packaged, and whether, for example, they will take back pallets after delivery.
Even where a purchase is a one-off bought directly without a tender, some environmental aspects of the product may be readily identifiable. Many appliances have energy efficiency rating labels, which indicate how much energy they use in a year. It is an easy matter to compare products with these labels. Similarly, some water-using appliances are labelled with water efficiency ratings. Office equipment qualifies to display Energy Star labels if it incorporates provision for a reduced energy or "sleep" mode that uses no more than a specified level of energy.
Product labels may identify use of recycled materials and other environmental aspects of a product. These should be viewed with some caution to ensure that the claims are actually meaningful to the conditions under which the product will be used and that the labels do not ignore significant issues. You may also wish to ask for quantitative evidence of superior environmental performance from the labelled product. There is an international standard for eco-labels: ISO 14024 - Environmental Labelling.
Eco-labels can provide useful information regarding the environmental attributes of a product or service. There are several key types of eco-label:
There is currently no government-endorsed, comprehensive, third-party verified, eco-label in Australia. Purchasers should note that, while eco-labels can assist in purchasing decision making, they do not necessarily indicate the best environmental performer within an industry, or the best product within a range of environmentally significant products.
Departments should include a clear statement in all relevant tenders that gives notice to potential suppliers of the Australian Government's intention to consider environmental issues in purchasing decisions.
Environmental factors can be integrated into purchasing decision-making in several different ways. The most appropriate approach will vary with the product or service being purchased as well as the department or agency involved. Some options are given below. One or more of these can be used in a given purchasing evaluation.
In some cases, departments or agencies may specify that a product or service must meet specific environmental performance requirements. Bids that do not comply with the environmental performance requirements would be eliminated from the tender process. Such requirements might include the following.
Buyers may decide to allocate a specified proportion of the selection criteria to environmental performance. The allocation would vary, depending on the product or service.
| The City of Seattle required computer vendors to answer environmental questions. The answers were rated equally with price and equipment features and were included in recommendations for City product choices. Following on from this equal weighting approach, Seattle continues to work with vendors while on contract to ensure ongoing improvements in environmental performance. For more information see: www.seattle.gov/environment/purchasing.htm |
Developing an environmental performance score to be included in product selection can be done in many different ways. The Environmental Purchasing Toolkit on this website provides the framework for a recommended approach.
Under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, Australian Government departments and agencies are required "to include in their Annual Reports a section detailing the environmental performance of the organisation and the organisation's contribution to Ecologically Sustainable Development."
For many departments and agencies, normal office operations may be a significant aspect of their environmental performance, through use of energy and other resources. Environmental purchasing can help to reduce the environmental effects of departmental operations. Departments should therefore include details of their environmental purchasing activities within the s516A environmental information in their Annual Report.
To make meaningful reporting possible, departments may establish simple programmes for monitoring environmental purchasing. These could include, for example, keeping records of environmental provisions in specifications, tenders or contracts, and purchases of energy efficient products, products made from recycled materials, or other environmentally preferable products.
One efficient and effective technique for monitoring and reporting on environmental purchasing is to have it as an aspect of your agency's EMS and Greenhouse Challenge Agreement5. It may seem difficult to make a definitive link between a new purchasing decision and environmental benefit, but it is often possible to obtain data from manufacturers and suppliers that can fill this information gap.
To illustrate, by working with data on appliance energy efficiency, an agency could determine that the new appliance requires X amount less energy per year, which means Y tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from electricity generation avoided.
In some cases, your purchasing activities can make an important contribution to the quality of data in your agency's EMS. For example, many companies that recycle office equipment consumables (such as toner cartridges) will supply certificates of diversion from landfill that will quantify the amount of waste reduction your actions have achieved.
When you have monitored and reported internally on your environmental purchasing initiatives, you may wish to report these back to the Department of the Environment and Heritage. The Greening of Government website includes an archive of environmental purchasing "Success Stories" at: www.ea.gov.au/industry/sustainable/purchasing/successstories.html
Departments should ensure that their purchasing officers are suitably trained to understand all aspects of Australian Government procurement, including environmental issues and considerations. Departments should ensure that training providers are aware of the Government's environmental and sustainability policies, and of the contents of this Guide. Some departments may find it useful to hold training sessions on particular aspects of environmental purchasing.