Page 20 - College Planning & Management, July/August 2017

ARE WE GREEN YET?
identify green vendors, goods and services,” he says. Yeoman sees other steady, positive movement. He points
to data that shows a growing commitment to and high pri- oritization of green procurement. The data also signals that green procurement has moved to the implementation stage.
Where It’s Working
Power Purchase Agreements are an emerging success story for green purchasing. “Almost nobody was using PPAs to buy renewable power in 2009 or 2010,” says Julian Dautremont-Smith, director of programs, AASHE. “Now over 100 institutions have entered into long-term con- tracts for green power using this mechanism, reducing risk from volatility in energy prices and often saving money in the process too.”
PPAs lock in a fixed rate for renewable energy from a developer. The agreement doesn’t necessarily save money, but a fixed rate removes price uncertainty while mak-
ing a real dent in carbon emissions. “Hundreds of schools committed to carbon neutrality and the low-hanging fruit, like replacing incandescent bulbs with LED lights, has been picked,” says Dautremont-Smith. “PPAs let schools transi- tion to renewable energy in a cost-effective way.”
For schools committed to buying green products, certifications help justify the spend. EPEAT rates elec- tronic equipment and Green Seal does the same for goods like paper, cleaning products and construction materials. “Products with ‘Fair Trade’ certification have done well on college campuses, too,” says Dautremont-Smith. The same cannot be said for “organic,” however.
Where It’s Lagging
Sorting through certifications or negotiating a PPA takes enough time and money to keep resource-strapped schools out of the game. To complicate matters, department secretaries are often charged with purchasing. Expecting them to wade through research and certifications on top of their other duties is unrealistic. “In ‘town and gown’ places the order is often passed off to a local company because a cousin works there,” says Yeoman.
And then there’s this: at a time when everything is political, Yeoman reports that his survey often come back with responses that question the validity of green pro- curement. “We will get freehand written responses that say, ‘Green purchasing and certification are more of the liberal agenda. We don’t use them and never will.’”
Where It’s Going
But if you can eliminate waste, inefficiency, harm and and evolves. The latest on the green front involves consolidat- risk it seems like saving money will come naturally. CPM
ing buying power across sectors and quantifying all angles. “Right now, there isn’t a universal definition of green spend,” says Sam Hummel, CEO, Sustainable Purchasing
Leadership Council (SPLC), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to support and recognize purchasing leader- ship that accelerates the transition to a prosperous and sustainable future. The organization is creating a rigorous way to define and quantify that spend in a holistic way. Instead of comparing products, the strategic approach identifies social and environmental impacts in the supply chain, prioritizes and executes actions and then bench- marks them.
“Product substitutions is just one solution strategy,” Hummel says. He then ticks off the others: “There’s de- mand reduction, behavior change, process change, supplier engagement, outsourcing and insourcing.”
As an example, Hummel points to the City of Alam- eda, CA. Their paper purchases were up, but the recycled content of that paper was not. Switching to 100 percent recycled content would add a 20 percent premium — a whopping $100,000 — to the bill.
Instead of spiking the idea, the City gathered stake- holders to identify who uses paper and why. They then implemented behavior changing strategies that reduced paper use by 20 percent and aggregated procurement to one vendor across all departments. The strategic sourc- ing approach allowed Alameda to use 20 percent less paper overall and the paper they do use has 100 percent recycled content.
Today SPLC counts 200 members across all sectors. Twenty of them are higher education institutions. Hum- mel feels that this alignment of purchasing power across business, government and education will create a big and verifiable impact. Publishing it through an Application Programming Interface will allow results to be incorporated into software multiplying the effect.
And it will perhaps get procurement professionals a seat at the “big table.” A long-held dream for NAEP’s Yeoman,
a green approach can upgrade the procurement depart- ments’ standing at schools.
“You can’t ask faculty to come up with money-saving ideas,” he says. “But procurement professionals can find ways to save and still be sustainable.” That sustainability can also be a great recruitment tool for students, faculty and staff.
For Hummel, it’s bigger than the dollars. “For us it’s about stewarding the marketplace and influencing the supply chain.”
Survey trolls aside, buy-in to green procurement continues
20 COLLEGE PLANNING & MANAGEMENT / JULY/AUGUST 2017
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