UC Berkeley Practices Sustainable Purchasing
Environmental preferable purchasing (EPP) involves buying products that have a smaller environmental impact than comparable products. They may have a reduced manufacturing footprint such as recycled products, lower operating impact such as Energy Star® appliances, or a smaller disposal impact because of reduced packaging. The practice of computing the production, operation, and disposal costs and impacts - or life cycle assessment - is an important tool when making purchasing decisions so that the total cost of ownership is included.
UC Berkeley follows a rigorous set of guidelines concerning campus purchasing, as part of the UC Policy on Sustainable Practices. These standards obligate Berkeley to consider the lifecycle cost of purchases and prioritize the purchase of products which are reusable or recyclable, which have minimal packaging, and products that will be 'taken back' by manufacturers at the product’s end of life. At Berkeley, efforts are underway to operationalize the goals, and have included the introduction of Sustainable Copy Paper Guidelines. Even before these guidelines were released, the campus had already reduced its use of non-recycled content copy paper by half (from 70% to 35% of total). In 2007, almost half of the total purchases of janitorial supplies from main suppliers were classified as green.
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