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2
Government Efforts
M
any of the sustainable procurement activities within the federal
government have been spurred by the 2009 Executive Order
EO 13514, Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Eco-
nomic Performance, which requires federal agencies to develop sustainabil-
ity goals that focus on making improvements related to environmental,
energy, and economic performance. As part of this effort, the General
Services Administration (GSA) is working to integrate sustainability into
its purchasing decisions. The Section 13 Interagency Working Group, cre-
ated under Section 13 of EO 13514, is evaluating the feasibility of working
with the federal vendor and contractor community to provide informa-
tion to assist agencies in tracking and reducing greenhouse gas emissions
(GHG) related to the supply of products and services to the government.
According to workshop presenter Stephen Leeds1 from the Office
of the Administrator at GSA, the agency purchases about $95 billion
in goods and services annually, including 12 million products through
18,000 vendors, making the agency well positioned to influence the fed-
eral government’s purchasing decisions. GSA’s goal is to have a supply
chain that is sustainable throughout. Sustainable procurement, Mr. Leeds
added, is about “making smart investments in products that provide bet-
ter services” for a longer period of time. Achieving a sustainable supply
chain requires an understanding of the environmental “hotspots” within
an industry—in other words, the components of the supply chain with
1 Senior Counselor to the Administrator at the time of the workshop.
5
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6 SUSTAINABLE PROCUREMENT CONSIDERATIONS
the largest environmental impact. The agency’s thinking about sustain-
able purchasing is evolving, with a focus on life-cycle approaches, return
on investment, risk mitigation, intentionality, and partnership, he said.
GSA is adopting a life-cycle approach to sustainable purchasing as
it “bridges the silos of disposal and acquisition,” Mr. Leeds explained.
The agency is sending a clear signal to the private sector that the focus is
broader than the individual environmental impacts of purchasing deci-
sions. Partnering with the private sector, as well as with state and local
governments, is important to the agency’s work and its goal of achieving
a sustainable supply chain.
Nancy Gillis from GSA’s Federal Supply Chain Emissions Program
Management Office (PMO) described how GSA and other agencies have
worked to advance sustainable acquisition in the federal supply chain.
GSA does not view the concept of “sustainability” as synonymous with
the “environment,” Ms. Gillis said, but considers it a broader issue that
encompasses economic and social issues as well. The agency is approach-
ing procurement decisions by prioritizing products’ life-cycle return on
investment and by considering environmental, economic, and social ben-
efits and costs. In other words, the agency is trying to balance the need to
reduce energy use, resource use, and environmental impacts while also
taking into account economic considerations.
Ms. Gillis discussed the office’s other activities, including collabo-
rating with industry and supporting and managing the Sustainability
in Procurement Fellowship Program. The program introduces fellows
to the concept of sustainability and provides an overview of the federal
government’s activities around sustainable procurement. Another effort is
the GreenGov Supply Chain partnership, which was designed to increase
the energy efficiency of vendors and contractors’ supply chains and to
reduce their GHG emissions. The partnership resulted from a GSA report
that found sustainability considerations, especially GHG emissions data,
should be used in the federal procurement process, and that agencies
should engage the vendor community to track and reduce GHG emissions
through a collaborative, transparent, and deliberative process. 2
The Section 13 Interagency Working Group is currently evaluating
and recommending ways to advance sustainable acquisition throughout
the federal government, Ms. Gillis explained. For example, after evaluat-
ing whether it is feasible for the federal contractor community to provide
GHG emissions data related to the supply of products for use in gov-
ernment procurement decisions, the working group recommended that
suppliers not be required to provide complete inventories of their GHG
2 General Services Administration (GSA). 2010. Executive Order 13514 Section 13: Recom-
mendations for Vendor and Contractor Emissions. Washington, DC.
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7
GOVERNMENT EFFORTS
emissions. Instead, the group recommended that the government, as an
incentive, inform suppliers that GHG emissions data could be considered
by agencies when making procurement decisions.
Alison Kinn Bennett from the Environmental Protection Agency’s
(EPA) Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics described the activities of
a subgroup of the Section 13 working group that focused on product stan-
dards and ecolabels. This subgroup, which involves GSA, EPA, Depart-
ment of Defense (DOD), National Institutes of Health (NIH), United States
Department of Agriculture (USDA), and other agencies is responsible for
ensuring that the product-related acquisition goals of EO 13514 are met
by providing guidelines for selecting environmental sustainability stan-
dards or ecolabeling programs. The subgroup views standards setting as
a pyramid, as shown in Figure 2-1. Environmental and health data and
tools are the base, with standards and incentives for green products built
on those, Ms. Kinn Bennet said. From that, a system to verify standards
is established, so that ultimately buyers are able to more easily find green
products with effective, reliable standards.
Ms. Kinn Bennett noted that the subgroup’s work has had several
phases, including grounding; developing draft guidelines; assessing the
guidelines using a survey of standards and consultation among federal
agencies; holding listening sessions with stakeholders; and preparing a
report. The assessment phase of the subgroup’s work focused on existing
U.S. and international protocols for standard setting and environmen-
tally preferable product claims and verification methodologies. A survey
conducted by the subgroup identified about 80 guidelines for selecting
standards in ecolabels. Those guidelines were then categorized into five
general areas:
• Standard setting: how the standard was created
• Standard substance: the content, relevance and effectiveness of
standard criteria
• Conformity assessment: how the standard was created and whether
it was third-party verified or compliance was self-declared
• Program management: how the program is managed, governed
and operated
• Market penetration: the extent to which it is used and recognized
in the market
Ms. Kinn Bennett noted that going forward, it will be important for
agencies to address trade-offs and assess environmental impacts across
media and life-cycle stages when making sustainable acquisition deci-
sions. The subgroup wants to encourage more holistic, comprehensive
thinking on standards and criteria development, she said.
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8 SUSTAINABLE PROCUREMENT CONSIDERATIONS
FIGURE 2-1 Development of effective, green standards for products that buyers
can readily identify.
SOURCE: Alison Kinn Bennet presentation, December 7, 2011.
Josh Silverman from the Office of Sustainability Support at the
Department of Energy (DOE) and Karen Moran from the Defense Logis-
tics Agency (DLA) with the Department of Defense described sustain-
able procurement efforts at their respective agencies. According to Dr.
Silverman, DOE relies heavily on its contractors to implement and inte-
grate sustainability into procurement decisions; the agency establishes
requirements, but contractors are responsible for implementing them.
DOE also relies heavily on effective communication and information
exchange; for example, the agency has an ongoing working group with
hundreds of active members who regularly exchange information on
best practices. The agency also tracks data on the use and procurement
of green products and is trying to further integrate sustainability require-
ments into its contracting, with the goal of using sustainable procurement
as a strategy to drive improved mission performance. The agency now
requires contractors—particularly those providing construction and cus-
todial services—to review contract actions for ways to integrate sustain-
ability requirements.
Additionally, DOE conducted a quasi-“hotspot” analysis to assess both
the products in highest demand and available standards, Dr. Silverman
said. The Green Buy Program within DOE offers awards to contractors
and vendors that purchase these priority products. He added that DOE
is trying to incentivize and reward behavior that integrates sustainable
approaches. It will be necessary to better quantify the benefits of these
activities so that their impact can be understood and used to make the
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9
GOVERNMENT EFFORTS
business case for sustainable procurement, he said; a purely compliance-
oriented approach may not be as effective in moving this effort forward.
Karen Moran described the role of the DLA as a combat logistics sup-
port agency and noted that much of the agency’s work is contracted. DLA
is continually trying to incorporate sustainability into its procurement
decisions and those of its contractors, Ms. Moran said. She described sev-
eral ongoing sustainable procurement programs at the agency, including
efforts to encourage procurement of bio-based products; a program that
returns unused medications to vendors; and a variety of alternative fuel
initiatives, including efforts to increase use of renewable energy and bio-
diesel. Another initiative is incorporating environmental information into
an electronic purchasing system known as the Federal Catalog System.
This information includes environmental attribute codes that indicate a
sustainable characteristic for a specified product.
Ms. Moran described a recent joint GSA/DOD sustainable procure-
ment project that kicked off with a meeting on November 17, 2011. The
meeting brought together representatives from both agencies to discuss
translating policy into action, the need to integrate sustainable procure-
ment into the course of business, life-cycle assessment, and the value of
synchronizing GSA and DOD to enhance standardization. Participants
at the meeting discussed the need for compelling messaging that would
cast sustainable procurement in terms of an agency’s mission, Ms. Moran
said. Discussion at the November meeting also explored potential ways
to motivate behavioral change related to sustainable procurement along
with the recognition that training alone cannot create culture change.
Finally, Ms. Moran noted that there was discussion of the need for a tool-
box, which should be scaled in complexity and size for different types of
procurement, as well as the need for a mechanism to test products and
provide feedback.
Edward Rau from the Division of Environmental Protection at the
National Institutes of Health (NIH) spoke about efforts to incorporate sus-
tainable procurement at NIH. His department directly purchases, funds,
or influences purchases related to health care, food, drugs, and biomedical
research; however, NIH has few sustainable criteria for these products
and no effective tools to help make such purchases more sustainable, he
noted. The information on sustainable purchasing that is available consists
primarily of static reference documents distributed across many separate
Web sites, which typically cannot be applied by procurement profession-
als to perform, facilitate, or track purchasing transactions. One area where
NIH would benefit from a sustainable procurement tool would be in pur-
chasing replacement freezer units that are 10 percent more energy efficient
than the current units on NIH’s Bethesda campus, Captain Rau said. This
would save NIH about $1 million a year in electricity costs. According to
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10 SUSTAINABLE PROCUREMENT CONSIDERATIONS
Elements of a Sustainable Purchasing Tool:
Provide an authoritative, one-stop sustainable shopping reference
ü
Centralized and automated
ü
Interactive
ü
Simple, two-step search and buy function
ü
Have data collection and reporting functions
ü
Link directly to other procurement systems
ü
Characterize transactions as compliant or noncompliant to FAR
ü
Track desirable, sustainable attributes
ü
Link to agency approvals and published literature
ü
Edward Rau, National Institutes of Health, December 8, 2011.
a recent survey, the current freezer units account for 29 percent of total
electricity use, $12 million a year in costs, and releases of about 59,000
metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalence per year.
Another gap in sustainable procurement tools is in identifying haz-
ardous toxic or polluting substances, Captain Rau noted. From a public
health perspective toxicity is one of the most important criteria in sus-
tainable acquisition, he said. Although the interim Federal Acquisition
Regulations (FAR) require procurement of products and services that are
nontoxic, this has been difficult to implement, due in part to a lack of clear
definitions and toxicity data. To address gaps in available information,
Captain Rau has spearheaded the development of a “substance of con-
cern” list that would restrict or prohibit the government from procuring
products or services that contain or release listed substances of concern.
The proposed list could be used as an interim screening and selection
method until better data and methods of comparative toxicology are
developed. The list would inventory substances by their chemical abstract
service registry number to reduce synonym confusion, be derived from
other well-established listings such as EPA’s Integrated Risk Information
System (IRIS)3 or the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s Safer Prod-
ucts lists,4 and characterize the listed substance as banned or restricted
in certain uses. Where available, it would also list alternatives for the
substance of concern.
Another area with gaps that a procurement tool could address is the
tracking and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the supply chain,
3 www.epa.gov/iris
4 www.saferproducts.gov
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11
GOVERNMENT EFFORTS
added Captain Rau. Metrics, emissions accounting requirements, and
boundary definitions would all need to be established for such a tool.
Full life-cycle data would also be needed so that the focus is not just on
the embodied greenhouse gas of the product but also its full life cycle. He
gave the example of sulfur hexafluoride, which appears on the substance
of concern list, not because it is toxic per se but because it is a potent
greenhouse gas.
Another major gap in sustainable procurement efforts is consider-
ation of a product’s end of life. Currently, procurement tends to focus on
a product’s recycled material content or bio-based materials rather than
on its reusability, recyclability, or biodegradability. These considerations
are critical for meeting net zero goals that are becoming more widely
adopted, Captain Rau said.5
He described his view of the elements that would be included in an
effective sustainability-oriented procurement tool. It would provide an
authoritative, one-stop sustainable shopping reference for all products
and services, be very centralized, and be automated. It would be interac-
tive and not merely a reference companion or compilation. It would have
a simple, two-step search-and-buy function; purchasers would search
for a specific product or service and then be directed to where to buy
a compliant product. This would save time by eliminating the need to
search for applicable requirements and products that conform to them,
as is currently done. The tool would eliminate the need for purchasers to
understand complex, rapidly-changing, sustainable procurement require-
ments, thus minimizing training needs. It would also have data collection
and reporting functions and would link directly to other procurement
systems to avoid multiple data-entry errors. In addition, it would charac-
terize a transaction as compliant or noncompliant with any regulations,
such as the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR), and track how well
a product or service adheres to other desirable but not mandatory sus-
tainable attributes. It is critical that users have confidence in the quality
of the data, and be assured that purchases made with the tool meet all
applicable requirements, Captain Rau stressed. Lastly, for scientific and
medical applications, it would be critical that purchases of medical sup-
plies and devices directly link to agency approvals, such as Food & Drug
Administration (FDA) approvals, and to published medical literature.
5 The DOD has a primary goal focused toward net zero, meaning net zero energy use,
water use, and waste. The aim is to start with reduction, then progress through repurpos-
ing, recycling, energy recovery, and lastly disposal. Other agencies are moving toward this
concept of net zero. See: army-energy.hqda.pentagon.mil/netzero/.
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