The Green Purchasing Program provides prioritized focus and resources to City departments for product and service acquisitions, and centralized controls that encourage and assure compliance.  This objective is aggressively directed through the Climate Action Plan, Mayor’s Executive Orders, City ordinances and resolutions, City wide procurement policies and acquisition procedures, resources and standards.  In addition, City Purchasing contracts include boilerplate language that:

• Prohibit idling of delivery vehicles,
• Mandate use of 100% PCF paper for City work
• Mandate duplexing of document production
• Mandate provision of services using toxin-free chemicals in pesticide or facility management service contracts,
• Mandate at least EPA product standards, Energy Star, Green Seal, EcoLogo, and other standards as applicable.

In selection of bids or proposals, the City often requires bidders to describe the environmental benefits that their product offers.  The City will often score and evaluate such responses as part of vendor selection.  The City has included environmental scoring for such products as computer hardware, cleaning chemicals, paint, copier equipment, and paper products.

The Green Team sponsors quarterly workshops for City staff and other regional businesses and public agencies on topics, such as FSC lumber contracts, toxin reduction in LEED facility maintenance, biodiesel fuels and lubricants, recycled paper, and paper waste reduction.

The City has retained a policy to share contracts with other local governmental agencies, to allow our GPP initiatives and products to be shared and distributed beyond the City.  These include such products as 100%-recycled content paper; EPEAT Silver standard Desktop Computers; copier equipment, FSC Certified lumber, slag cement, remanufactured laser cartridges, and green janitorial products, deconstruction and salvage contracts that “recycle” buildings instead of demolishing buildings.

Model for Citizens and Businesses

The City GPP program also works to serve as a model for citizens, households, other government agencies, small businesses as well as large corporations that are local or from around the country. This purpose was highlighted in the Mayor’s Green Ribbon Commission on Greenhouse Gases, which led to the commitments and action items in the Climate Action Plan and Climate Action Now. As a model to citizens and other government or business agents, the City GPP program will often seek products or services that are:

• Recent introductions to the marketplace, which may need a pilot or testing period.  This includes products where the efficacy or benefits may not yet be proven or widely adopted.  One recent example was slag cement, where the City tested the strength, durability and application for civil engineering construction.
• Less established in the marketplace, where consumer or other corporate demand has not been sufficiently large to drive the marketplace forward and/or make it independently sustainable.  The City has found that in certain cases, the City commitment to the GPP product line will increase the market demand sufficiently to make the product viable, for both the consumer market as well as the commercial or government market.  Specific examples include FSC Certified lumber, CFL Light bulbs, low-flow showerheads, and 100% recycled paper products.

For questions or more information, visit the Green Purchasing Home, Links or Policies pages or contact City Purchasing, Department of Executive Administration:

• E-mail: Jason.Edens@seattle.gov
• Phone: (206) 684-0445