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ABSTRACT. In recent years, concerns over environmental degradation and environmental sustainability have pushed governments to search for new ways to combat environmental problems. One such approach, which is gaining in popularity, is environmentally preferable purchasing (EPP). EPP attempts to address environmental challenges by taking advantage of government's vast purchasing power to create strong markets for environmentally friendly products and services. This article reviews governments' experience with EPP in the United States. Specifically, the article describes the development of EPP in the federal government and reviews EPP activities at both the national and subnational levels. Next, the article presents several broad strategies that governments and procurement professionals can pursue in implementing EPP. The article concludes by identifying several challenges facing EPP.
INTRODUCTION
Procurement is a government function to purchase the goods and services needed to run the government and provide government services. Because all local, state and federal governments must obtain goods and services, procurement is an important function of government. A governmental entity can approach procurement and provision of service in two ways. It can buy the materials it needs from a vendor and then use its own personnel to provide the service; or can enter into a contract with a second party provider for the needed service. The second party might be another unit of government, a nonprofit organization, or a forprofit firm that will provide both the materials and the service.
The more than sixty federal government agencies, employing more than 1.7 million civilian workers, acquire most of their goods and services through contracts. For instance, in 2001 the federal government spent more than $235 billion in goods and services contracts or nearly one-quarter of its discretionary resources (Government Accountability Office [GAO], 2003 a). State and local governments independently spent another $385 billion for contracted goods and services in 2000 (Cooper, 2003; Environment Protection Agency [EPA], 2000a). All units of government considered together, therefore, spend more than a half a trillion dollars annually on procurement. The amount of money spent by the government on goods and services has been increasing rapidly. The amount spent in 2001 showed an 11 percent increase over the amount spent 5 years earlier (GAO, 2003a). The downsizing of the federal government has been accompanied by an increase...