DoD Issues 'Green' Procurement Policy to Benefit Environment
By Sgt. 1st Class Doug Sample, USA
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Oct. 22, 2004 -- The Defense Department issued a new procurement
policy this week urging employees and military to "buy green."
The new "green procurement" policy requires the department's civilian and
military personnel to purchase products and services that benefit the
environment, said Alex Beehler, DoD's chief of environmental safety and
occupational health, in an Oct. 21 interview with the Pentagon Channel and
American Forces Press Service.
He noted that products such as recycled office supplies and lubricants and
biomass-produced goods such as energy are among the types of purchases the
policy requires.
Biomass uses agricultural and organic wastes to create renewable energy such as
electricity and industrial process heat and steam, Beehler explained. According
to Energy Department statistics, biomass was the leading source of renewable
energy in the United States last year.
Beehler said the green procurement policy is the latest endeavor by DoD to
forge its reputation as being a good environmental steward. That reputation, he
added, stretches back some 30 years and includes myriad DoD recycling programs.
In fact, the first recycling policy developed by DoD was under Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's first term in 1976. Like that policy then,
Beehler said, this new policy is "intrinsically the right thing to do."
"It's the right thing to do toward our environment, toward the mission, toward
making the lives of our civilian and military employees and families much
better by having a safer, better Earth."
Beehler said there is no requirement under the policy to purchase green
products that "cost more, are scarce, or have other limitations."
However, he added that consideration should be given to those items that over
the long term would produce more cost savings or improved efficiency. He said
training will be provided to help those directly involved in the purchasing
process to identify green procurement items.
The training also will help raise the awareness of procurers to buy green, he
added, "so that it becomes incorporated into their daily operations to look at
pursuing green procurement opportunities wherever they realistically exist."
The department plans to develop a catalog that will show DoD procurement
officers and employees where they can find and purchase green products, he
said.
Beehler said for now, DoD is focusing on implementing of the new policy, not
enforcing it. Plans call for an environmental management system that will
monitor compliance through "environmental audits and environmental contracting
to make sure that the policy is successfully implemented," he added.
Beehler, who has worked in the environmental field for 20 years, said the new
policy underlines DoD's commitment to the environment. He pointed out that
environmental programs in the past were committed to "making sure things didn't
get worse and to reducing the waste and the pollution that had already
occurred."
"In the beginning, that made perfectly good sense," he said. "But as time has
evolved and as our programs have matured, we really need to do a lot more."
He said the time has come "to go beyond environmental compliance," and that the
focus now should be on "improving the environment rather than just protecting
it."
The new policy, he said, "will empower each individual to have a vital stake in
improving the environment."
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