December 29, 2004—New reports available in the Environmental Reporting Logistics System offer enhanced capabilities to assist in meeting the requirements of the “buy green” procurement policy issued by the Defense Department in October.
The Defense Logistics Information Service originally developed ERLS to meet environmental reporting requirements on local inventories of hazardous materials, but the system has evolved as new “green procurement” requirements began to encourage civilian and military personnel to purchase products and services that benefit the environment. Three new reports ERLS provides include a quarterly Green Procurement Report, a “Top 8 Custom Report” that shows data at the service and agency level, and a similar report at the installation level.
The ERLS GPR can be used by military services and federal agencies to track environmentally friendly purchases and provide required input to pollution prevention reports such as the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act 6002.
“The GPR provides visibility of green and non-green procurements from Defense Logistics Agency and the General Services Administration,” said Phillip Messner, ERLS program manager.
The quarterly procurement report provides requisition totals by service or agency and Department of Defense Activity Address Code for all National Stock Numbers that are assigned an Environmental Attribute Code. After each quarterly batch process completes, the report is imported from ERLS to the GPR web application. A portion of this data is used to compile the yearly Resource Conservation and Recovery Act report. This report includes selected environmental attributes and their product categories.
When a service or agency wants to select its own “Top 8” attributes for inclusion in a report, the new custom report allows them to prepare a Top 8 RCRA using eight codes predetermined at the headquarters level. At the local level, a similar report can be prepared by matching data against the installation’s activity code and eight attributes to generate a report.
These reports are possible because the system uses the ENAC data included in the Federal Logistics Information System to identify the green items a user has purchased, thus making it much easier than trying to track purchases manually. The ability to tailor the format of the report being produced allows the user to adapt ERLS data for any other uses beyond meeting reporting requirements.
Since the signing of Executive Order 13101, federal agencies are required to buy fewer hazardous items and increase their use of environmentally preferred products, recycled items and items capable of being recycled. The order also included heightened reporting and compliance requirements. To meet these requirements, the senior logistics officers of each military service asked the Defense Logistics Agency to develop the ENAC.
The resulting codes are used by DLIS personnel to highlight green products in FLIS to encourage the military’s use of environmentally friendly products. The source data in FLIS supports numerous logistics information systems like ERLS. Now, FLIS includes a master requirement code for environmental attributes, plus comprehensive guidelines from the Environmental Protection Agency and energy efficiency data for a select group of items.
In an Oct. 21 interview with the American Forces Press Service, Alex Beehler, Defense Department chief of environmental safety and occupational health, said there is no requirement under the policy to purchase green products that “cost more, are scarce or have other limitations.”
Beehler added, however, that consideration should be given to those items which would produce more cost savings or improved efficiency over the long term. According to Messner, ERLS can help customers achieve those long-term savings by information that keeps them from buying something that appears cheaper but ends up costing more because of the cost to clean up or properly dispose of the item when the mission is over.
Anyone still uncertain of how ERLS can help can get more information from the Quick Start guide on the ERLS site or by calling the DLA Customer Contact Center at (877) 352-2255.
A Defense Logistics Agency field activity, DLIS creates, obtains, manages and integrates data from several sources. It shares this data through user- friendly products and services that support logistics operations throughout the Defense Department, other federal agencies and elements of the private sector.
