ENVIRONMENTALLY SUSTAINABLE PURCHASING
The CMS environmental management system encourages use of environmentally sustainable products (ESP) and services. By including environmental considerations in purchasing decisions, the district may reduce its environmental footprint and promote practices that improve human health, conserve natural resources, and reward environmentally conscious vendors.
District personnel are encouraged to actively seek out environmentally preferable products and services for use in day-to-day operations when quality, performance, price, and functionality are comparable to their non-environmentally preferable counterparts. A purchasing guide and tracking system is in development that will provide insights into decision making leading to more environmentally sustainable purchasing decisions.
WHAT ARE ENVIRONMENTALY SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTS?
Environmentally sustainable products and services have less negative effect on human health and the environment when compared with competing products or services that serve the same purpose. Potential comparisons may consider the environmental cost of acquisition of raw materials, production, manufacturing, packaging, distribution, reuse, operation, maintenance and disposal.
EXAMPLES OF CMS SUSTAINABLE PURCHASING
- Procure in excess of 900,000 gallons of green cleaning products annually educing chemical load of buildings
- Participation in friends of the farmer local produce program reducing carbon footprint of commodities by reducing miles traveled to arrive at CMS
- Eliminated the use of 17,200 gallons of emulsifiers used in schools reducing chemical load on buildings and staff exposures to caustics by switching to alternate floor stripping process
- Use of 5400 cubic yards of recycled pallet word as playground fall protection reclaiming resources that had met their usefulness in one form and providing a secondary use for the resource
- Piloting alcohol and biological parts cleaners reducing VOC emissions in automotive shops
- Using multi-function network printers reducing the amount of natural resources used in the manufacture of multiple machines, reducing the number of toner cartridges necessary, reducing electricity consumption by centralizing the printing function, reducing paper use by using the scanning to PDF function for distribution of documents
- Purchasing toner cartridges that the manufacturer will accept return of eliminating waste stream
- Purchasing water based interior paints reducing VOC emissions
- Purchasing playground equipment made from recycled plastics
- Purchasing energy star appliances and computer equipment that operate using less energy than their counterparts
THIRD PARTY PRODUCT CERTIFICATION
There are a number of organizations providing third-party certifications on products reported to be more environmentally friendly or more environmental friendly than their counterparts. These certifications programs are a means to read through what is commonly called "green washing" or the misrepresentation of the environmental benefit of a product in order for the manufacturer to benefit from their product being associated with the growing public sentiment to go green.
A partial listing of third-party certification association links is provided below:
FOR MORE INFORMATION
The North Carolina DENR Environmentally Preferable Procurement website has information and links to state, federal and other resources of value to EPP programming and may be accessed by clicking on the Environmentally Sustainable Purchasing website tab in Related Links on the left of this page.
The Mecklenburg County Environmental Purchasing Guide may be accessed by clicking on the Environmentally Sustainable Purchasing Guide tab in the Related Links on the left of this page.
EPA has designated products that are or can be made with recovered materials and to recommend practices for buying these products.
The catagories of products include:
Vsit the EPA recovered materials support page by clicking here>>>>>>>index.htm