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Affirmative Procurement - Green Purchasing

In this edition of the newsletter I want to provide some tips and more information on Green Purchasing. I hope that most of you have had the opportunity to review the information and training links provided as "tabs" to the initial newsletter. To help keep you informed I've extracted the following from the JLab Green Purchasing overview. This defines the Lab's main program objective -- to be an environmentally friendly neighbor in the community.

"The purchase and use of products and services can have a profound impact on the environment. Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, Jefferson Lab, recognizes the positive impact that it can make on the environment through the purchasing decisions that its staff members make. It is the intent of Jefferson Lab to integrate environmental considerations into every aspect of acquisition. Although the environment may not be the core of our professional mission, the integration of these factors will result in economic, health, and environmental gains that will further our goals."

A large part of the effort to improve our environment is to create markets for those items recovered from our recycling programs. There is a limited benefit from diverting consumer waste products from landfills if we do not "recycle" them into new consumer products. These goods are identified as recycled content products. Most of these recycled content items that we purchase frequently are office supplies.

In FY 2001 over $200K in office supplies were purchased directly by Lab employees using either the JLab purchase card or JLab's e-commerce system. You, the staff members, directly make most of the purchases reported under the Green Purchasing program. Therefore, each of you have a major direct impact on reaching the DOE goal of purchasing 100% recycled content products by FY 2005. Our challenge is to purchase these recycled content products to the maximum extent possible consistent with required specifications, availability, and price reasonableness.

I believe that we have the tools to do that efficiently and effectively. I'm not certain that we can reach the 100% goal, since new products are being added to the "mix", but we can easily improve our current compliance. The JLab e-commerce site clearly identifies recycled content products and several vendors have on-line catalogs that only offer recycled content products, including remanufactured toner cartridges. Please use these vendors for your Lab e-commerce office supply purchases. Here are some reasons why environmental factors are important and how you can support the Green Purchasing program!

Benefits to the Environment

What Does It Mean To Buy Green?

Buying green means purchasing products or services that will reduce environmental impact. Green Purchasing involves looking at methods to become more efficient and environmentally responsible. Recycling, energy efficiency, water conservation, and pollution prevention are all objectives of environmentally preferred, environmentally responsible or environmentally sound procurement or purchasing.

Tips for Buying "Green" with the Government Credit Card

You have the opportunity to help the environment while buying products that meet your program's needs. As part of our contract with DOE we are required to buy products that are made with recycled content, have less packaging, are energy efficient, don't create hazardous waste, and incorporate other environmentally preferable attributes. As you use the government credit card, you can help the EPA, the DOE, and Jefferson Lab meet this commitment.

Here's how: the following topics contain hyperlinks that will provide additional Green Purchasing resources

When buying products, consider the following Green Purchasing environmental criteria:

Minimize

Favor

As noted in the last newsletter the Lab's participation for FY 2001 in purchasing recycled content products was 84%. For the same period, the composite DOE (all sites) was 87%. We have a long way to go to reach the goal of 100% in FY 2005. Since most of the products purchased and reported under this program are purchased directly by the staff members, each of you have a direct impact on improving our support of this program and in reaching this goal. Thanks for your cooperation. However, continuous improvement will become increasingly more difficult as we increase our compliance. I'll need your help. If you have any questions or suggestions on Green Purchasing please call (x5139) or e-mail me at dobbins@jlab.org. Also, if you come across any interesting articles or information send them to me so I may share them with others.

Thanks, Dennis