An old warehouse on formerly contaminated land near East Campus became a renovated arts facility. Used “sharps” in the Duke University Medical Center became cheap, recycled medical equipment. Incandescent light bulbs all over the University were replaced with fluorescent ones, saving energy and thousands of dollars.
These examples reflect the initial success in implementing the Environmentally Preferable Purchasing Guidelines designed to make Duke an environmentally conscious green purchaser.
Duke adopted its Procurement Services’ EPP guidelines May 26 and is now fully in the process of putting all aspects of the guidelines into action. Although officials expect the implementation of the purchasing goals for office supplies to be completed by the end of the year, other aspects like energy and water, landscaping, forest conservation and toxics and pollution are being phased in more slowly.
“The EPP guidelines adopted this summer were the most comprehensive purchasing guidelines I’ve seen anywhere,” said Sam Hummel, Duke’s environmental sustainability coordinator.
Among the goals of the EPP guidelines is to increase the use and availability of environmentally preferable products, like those used in the University’s hundreds of offices.
“We are greening more than office supplies,” said Mandy Shoemaker, the environmental sustainability intern in charge of green purchasing. “We’re stepping it up one more notch compared to a lot of other schools.”
Office supplies, though, is the first section of the purchasing policy to be enacted. Since Corporate Express, Duke’s office product supplier, teamed up with Procurement Services, the supplier now buys more environmentally friendly products like recycled paper and re-manufactured toner cartridges for printers.
One of the goals of the guidelines is the creation of a green products “hot list.”
“We surveyed purchasers on 200 of the most popular products at Duke to make a hot list of green alternatives,” Shoemaker said. “We try to market ones that are the same in cost or slightly more expensive.”
For example, one of Duke’s most common office supplies is the adhesive note, which it buys made from recycled paper; Shoemaker said these actually cost the same as non-recycled adhesive notes. Furthermore, recycled toner cartridges are 60 percent cheaper than regular toner because the cartridge does not need to be re-manufactured.
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