May 10, 2004—The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced an addition to the U.S. Federal Government’s Comprehensive Procurement Guideline (CPG). Seven new items, including office furniture, have been designated as items that are or can be made with recovered materials. In addition, EPA is revising the designations for three items, including polyester carpet, which the agency now designates for moderate end-uses only.
The CPG implements portions of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and the Executive Order “Greening the Government Through Waste Prevention, Recycling, and Federal Acquisition”, which require EPA to designate items that are or can be made with recovered materials and to recommend practices that procuring agencies can use to procure such designated items. Once EPA designates an item, any procuring agency that uses appropriated federal funds to procure that item must purchase the item containing the highest percentage of recovered materials practicable. Today’s action encourages the use of the government’s purchasing power to stimulate the use of these materials in the manufacture of products, thereby fostering markets for materials recovered from solid waste.
This rule will be effective on May 2, 2005. Additional information is available on the EPA Web site. EPA is responsible for researching the availability of these items and maintains a list of suppliers that meet their criteria for using recovered materials. The Web site lists companies with such products and if a company has a product that EPA has not considered, that company can submit the item for consideration on a “Suppliers Information Form”. The form is available online.
