A number of companies have chosen to incorporate environmental considerations into their purchasing decisions as well as other more long-term first cost investments like major plant equipment. When purchasing items such as typing and printer paper it is easy to determine what product is more environmentally benign than another. Moreover, costs can be compared to the penny. But, what about cleaning solvent, waxes, glass cleaners and more? How do we proceed and how do the products work?
It has been argued that responsible facility management, beginning with the initial purchase of products and services that minimize environmental burdens, will reduce the company’s raw material, operating, maintenance, and disposal costs. Most important, a product’s environmental prefer-ability can often have positive impacts on its overall performance. That said, we should make various decisions based on the bottom line: environmentally- friendly, cost effective, and performance standards.
- Environmental considerations have to become part of the purchasing policies of the company. Additionally, traditional factors such as product safety, price, performance, and availability continue to dominate the decision process.
The production, use, and removal of certain products have undesirable impacts on human health and the environment. These impacts have costs that the company, and ultimately, the consumer as a whole ends up paying for in one way or another. Therefore, when calculating the before mentioned price, performance, and product safety, one must look at the hazardous or toxic nature of a product or service which can ultimately result in significant cleanup or liability costs. Although these impacts are less directly quantifiable to your purchasing, they are a cumulative and lasting environmental impact with potential for long-term environmental damages.
- Consideration of environmental preferable products should begin early in the acquisition process and should consider pollution prevention, which, as you remember, strives to eliminate and reduce, up-front, potential risks to human health and the environment.
Pollution prevention is the primary goal here, where there are many ways to apply pollution prevention to the purchasing process. First, one may customize purchases so that Facility Managers have input into the start-up phase, thereby having an early opportunity to apply “environmentally preferable” concepts to the initial purchase agreement. I would argue that early involvement by the Facility Team offers your company a unique point of leverage from which to address environmental impacts. Influence is a powerful driver in this economy, one in which one company can drive another to develop or provide certain products to “Close close the Dealdeal” and continue the sales relationship—influence is a powerful driver.
- When comparing environmental impacts, a company’s Facility Manager must consider the initial impacts of the manufacturing process and the ability for the ecosystem to recover. Consequently, geographic scale of the environmental impact is a consideration. The difference among competing products, and the overriding importance to protect human health is the Environmental Conservation Measure (ECM).
To determine the environmental prefer-ability, the Facility Manager needs to compare the various environmental impacts among competing products such as soaps, waxes and cleaners. To illustrate, would the reduction in energy required to produce a certain product be more important than the water pollution reductions associated with the use of a competing product? The ideal option would be a product that optimized both energy and water efficiencies while reducing water pollution. When this is not possible, however, the Facility Manager must choose between the two ECMs. It is important to consider both the nature of the environmental impact and the degree of difference between the competing products.
- Comprehensive, accurate, and meaningful information about the environmental performance of products is necessary in order to determine the environmentally preferable product.
OK? So what should I do?Although a comprehensive, accurate, and complete life cycle based information packet with complete breakdown of environmental characteristics of products is needed, it will not happen. The challenge then is to seek environmentally preferable product listings from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) at www.epa.gov or from other databases growing out of the market demand for environmentally preferable cleaning supplies. Even with thorough information, however, making evaluations is difficult. Purchasers should encourage suppliers to describe their product’s performance according to a pre-established menu of environmental attributes a company determines as priorities. Lastly, the product supplier’s disclosure of environmental information about their products will also foster competition and encourage the previously mentioned market-driven approach to environmental improvement.
Kelly Jon Andereck brings years of experience in technical architecture and design to any project. A specialist in sustainability, building performance, daylighting and environmental marketplace, he has served as project manager at Southern California Edison for seven years where he worked on energy simulation tools, field audits. He has also volunteered his work for several pro-bono projects, such as his recent design for a strawbale playhouse, built to benefit The Pittsburgh Project in collaboration with the USGBC.
His firm A Design a_design@earthlink.net, is a full-service energy and environmental design-consulting firm committed to providing the development community with specialized technical analysis and documentation.
