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 Green Purchasing

Training

OFEE now offers a free, on-line green purchasing training course, which is available on the Office of Personnel Management's GoLearn web site. You can find it in the Free Catalogue section, under Legislatively Mandated & Agency Required Topics. "What is Green Purchasing, Anyway?" is a fun and instructional course for contracting personnel, purchase card holders, facilities managers, and fleet managers provides an introduction to the Federal "green" purchasing program. The Federal government has requirements to purchase products with environmental and energy attributes. Also known as "green" purchasing, this program requires the purchasing of recycled content products, energy-efficient products and renewable energy technologies, alternative fuel vehicles and alternative fuels, biobased products, environmentally preferable products and services, and non-ozone depleting substances. The course is organized into modules explaining why we're buying "green," the legal basics, what we are required to do, the different types of "green" products, where to buy them, roles and responsibilities, and required reporting. It also provides examples, resources, and lots of reference web sites. Course duration ranges from 1 ½ hours for purchase card holders to approximately 2 ½ hours for contracting officers and contracting officer representatives. Completion of the course satisfies the Executive Order 13101 requirement that agencies provide training to contracting and program personnel. Please note that if you don't already have one, you will need to obtain a password to use the site and take the course.

OFEE offers green purchasing training to agency contracting, environmental, and facilities staff. The training primarily addresses purchasing of recycled content, biobased, and environmentally preferable products and also touches on purchasing of energy efficient products. It discusses the legal framework underlying the green purchasing programs, the pertinent Federal Acquisition Regulation provisions, the common myths about green purchasing, the specifics of the green purchasing programs, agency green purchasing examples, and product sources, including mandatory sources. It also provides the URLs for the recycled content, environmentally preferable, and product source web sites.

OFEE and the U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine developed a green purchasing train-the-trainer program, which has been presented to more than 30 agency environmental and procurement staff. The program consists of a PowerPoint presentation and an accompanying script. In addition to addressing the units discussed in OFEE's green purchasing training, it covers they types of training to provide to different audiences, compliance, program implementation, and goals and metrics. OFEE and USACHPPM will offer the train-the-trainer program in the future if there is sufficient interest. Please contact Dana Arnold at arnold.dana@ofee.gov if you would like to arrange for a green purchasing or train-the-trainer presentation.

Green purchasing training is available from both public and private sector sources. Following is a non-exclusive list of sources of green purchasing training. Contact these sources to discuss scope of training and costs. In addition, several Federal agencies offer e-training; see the links to Federal agency sites in Related Links.

  • Dana Arnold, White House Task Force on Waste Prevention and Recycling, arnold.dana@ofee.gov - buying recycled content products, environmentally preferable purchasing, biobased products, affirmative procurement programs
  • Pat Rippey and Beth Martin, U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine, pat.rippey@apg.amedd.army.mil or beth.martin@apg.amedd.army.mil - buying recycled content products, environmentally preferable purchasing, biobased products, affirmative procurement programs
  • Richard Langston, U.S. DOE, richard.langston@hq.doe.gov - environmental procurement policy
  • Alison Thomas, U.S. DOE, Federal Energy Management Program, alison.thomas@ee.doe.gov - energy-efficient products
  • Shabnam Fardanesh, U.S. DOE, Federal Fleet AFV Program, shabnam.fardanesh@ee.doe.gov - alternative fuel vehicles, alternative fuels, energy efficiency, FAST Federal fleet data collection system
  • Linda Mesaros, Mesaros Consulting, linmesaros@aol.com - the legal and FAR requirements, buying recycled content and environmentally preferable products, and affirmative procurement with an emphasis on biobased products
  • Richard Keller, Maryland Environmental Service, rkell@menv.com - buying recycled content products, recycling contracts, affirmative procurement, environmentally preferable purchasing, waste prevention and recycling
  • Scot Case, Center for a New American Dream, scot@newdream.org - environmentally preferable purchasing, affirmative procurement programs, life cycle
  • Sandra Cannon, Battelle (U.S. Department of Energy, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory), sandra.cannon@pnl.gov, environmentally preferable purchasing/life cycle purchasing
  • Kevin Lyons, Interim Director, University Procurement & Contracting, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, klyons@camden.rutgers.edu - environmentally preferable purchasing, affirmative procurement programs, integrating EPP into eProcurement Systems, and Life Cycle Assessment/Costing Training