This page's main content:

Purchasing

The Pollution Prevention Regional Information Center (p2ric) offers the following:

So what is green purchasing?

It's a way of adding environmental considerations to the price and performance criteria businesses use to make purchasing (transaction) decisions. Green purchasing is a consideration of supply chain management and is also known as environmentally preferred purchasing (EPP), green procurement, affirmative procurement, eco-procurement, and environmentally responsible purchasing. Green purchasing attempts to identify and reduce environmental impact and to maximize resource efficiency.

What have we done?

• Most major purchases involve life-cycle cost considerations. These are being done as a matter of good business.
• Office Depot offers a "Buy Green" catalog to help make selection of Environmentally Preferable Products easier for us.
• UNO Participates in Dell Computer's Takeback Program (where Dell accepts a used computer for responsible recycling--at no charge--for each computer purchased from them. More on Dell's Green Purchasing here.
• The Chemistry and Biology Departments have greatly reduced the purchase of bulk chemicals in favor of more appropriately sized containers, given the costs associated with disposal, shelf-lives of various reagents and the availability of most chemicals within 24 hours.

What can we do?

• Evaluate product’s full life-cycle cost. This means considering how much energy it is expected to use, maintenance costs, and other impacts over its lifetime.
• Consider if reduction, reuse or recycling can be factored into purchasing decisions.
• Follow one of the excellent guides below for a better explanation of what you can do.
• Read electronic copies of bills whenever possible, eliminating the need for consuming paper.

More information:

Responsible Purchasing Network

p2ric Green Procurement Topic Hub

Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI)

Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) - UNO is a member!