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2013 Green Procurement Survey Report

2013 Green Procurement Survey Report. Agenda. 2013 Highlights Introduction Section 1: General Policy Questions Section 2: Institutional Challenges & Priorities Section 3: Procurement Processes Conclusions. Highlights. 48% of 139 respondents were first timers and 50% responded in 2012.

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2013 Green Procurement Survey Report

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  1. 2013 Green Procurement Survey Report

  2. Agenda 2013 Highlights Introduction Section 1: General Policy Questions Section 2: Institutional Challenges & Priorities Section 3: Procurement Processes Conclusions

  3. Highlights • 48% of 139 respondents were first timers and 50% responded in 2012. • This was the 5th survey. The 2013 data was amazingly consistent with earlier surveys and we published the 5 year results. • Green Procurement has become accepted as a key element of institutional sustainability and policy adoption continues to grow. • 65% of institutions recognize it as such vs. 53% in 2009 • 47% have formally adopted a green procurement policy up from 24% in 2009

  4. Highlights (cont.) • Green procurement exists within the broader institutional sustainability plan including a climate action plan 50% of the time. This is the tipping point!! • Data replaced emotion as drivers of sustainability. • AASHE, STARS and ACUPCC are challenging the HE sector to move to data vs. PR. • Green procurement training is still terrible and hard to find. • Difficult economic conditions are not negatively affecting Green Procurement efforts. • 61% of respondents reported either NO or NO change in their programs (vs. 59% in 2010)

  5. Goals of the survey Identify the current state of green procurement trends within higher education Create a broader baseline for annual replicable surveys to measure progress Measure progress of adoption, toolsets and activities compared to the 2009, through 2013 surveys

  6. Demographics • Institutionally the FTE demographic has shifted over the five years but it is a very small: 2009 large 46% to 50% in 2013. • Likewise the five year trend for institutional identification remains consistent. Public Institutions were 62% of the 2009 respondents and 60% of 2013. • In 2011 we created a categorization for private-for profit institutions which has grown from 3% to 8.6%.

  7. General Policy Questions • We are disappointed with the lack of uptake for the Green Purchasing Policy Roadmap tool. The highest rate of readership in five years was 35% twice but in the last two years that number has fallen below 30%. • The most difficult of the three pillars of sustainability to weave into policy is social justice by nearly 1.5:1 and improvement from 2009 when it was 2:1.

  8. General Policy Questions • AASHE membership has grown significantly 33% in 2009 to 61.4% in 2013 as they have became the dominant higher education sustainability leader. • 48.6% of the AASHE members are participating in the STARS program. • ACUPCC participation has grown from 42% in 2010 to 49.6% in 2013. • This is the tipping point for higher education and for procurement professionals the beginning of an opportunity to demonstrate our value add.

  9. General Policy Questions • We have been predicting that sustainability plans are here to stay across the fives years the increase in the percentage of institutions with a pan has increased from 62% to 75.7% and the fact that the plans exist means that you must do something with the plan. • The evidence that action is being taken show up in the data as a virtual doubling of the number of institutions who had a climate action plan across the five years from 24% to 47.9% in 2013.

  10. General Policy Questions • Sustainability on campus is an extremely important activity which is being led by senior level personnel. It is clear that over the five years that the Director level in higher education is the dominant level of leadership and the 2013 results with 50% of respondents confirm this. • Of course not all general policy issues have been a success the continued abject failure of buy recycled products is disconcerting. • More than half of the respondents don’t even have a policy in place to buy back products made from all of those recyclemania contest and another 15% have a policy but don’t enforce it. The numbers are almost unchanged in the five year span.

  11. General Policies Summary • The Future of Green Procurement is Great! • 15.7% of respondents indicated they will add a Green Procurement policy in 2014 • This is consistent with commitments indentified since 2009 • A high percentage of respondents have not read the roadmap. This is a missed opportunity for NAEP that must be addressed. • Any policy that is not enforced (BUY RECYCLED) has a root cause. Steps should be taken to determine the reasons why? • AASHE/STARS and ACUPCC are very important and when aligned with green procurement policies, a sustainability and climate action plan lead to higher education organizations who are strategically positioned to will the battle of the recruitment and retention wars.

  12. General Policies Summary • The most difficult thing to accomplish in green procurement policy is to have a social justice component and to have a viable working policy. • We had a really poor response rate in 2013. 139 responses which is close to being not statistically valid. I would hope that it was a one year anomaly. I know you can do great things, help your organization to do the same.

  13. Institutional Challenges & Priorities • Institutional sustainability drivers have solidified with five years of survey data. • The big five remain the big five but the hype of “Do the right thing” is waning, while reducing the carbon footprint has gained materially and taken over the number one spot. • Reducing consumption and improving the institutional image are coming on hard. • Finally, reducing costs holds onto the fifth spot.

  14. Institutional Challenges & Priorities • The economic conditions where thought to have a negative impact on green procurement in 2010 • Four years of data do not support that conclusion. • Our two questions have consistently yielded a result which is understood to mean that higher education green procurement has largely been unchanged by those events. • In fact the data always includes some component of increases in green procurement activity. • Private schools are less affected than Public schools. • Larger schools are more affected than smaller schools.

  15. Institutional Challenges & Priorities Top five challenges remain the same • Justifying cost for green purchasing • Measuring progress with green procurement • Changing user behavior to focus on sustainability • Effectively promoting certified products and suppliers to end users • Validating supplier's green claims

  16. Institutional Challenges & Priorities Issues for Green Procurement programs in rank order • Purchasing products that contain ENERGY STAR certification • Increasing total post-consumer recycled content in purchased products • Measurement of green procurement compliance • Ensuring that all paper products purchased contain recycled content • Reducing total shipments of delivered goods • Increasing spend with diversity suppliers • Increasing spend with local suppliers • Increasing suppliers with eco-label (Green Seal, GREENGUARD)

  17. Institutional Challenges & Priorities The most dramatic positive increases come in this question, “Does your purchasing system have the ability do any of the following?” • Promote ‘green’ service providers (such as paper or printer cartridge recycling) in search results (75% / 30%) • Clearly identify green suppliers in the product search area (58% / 35%) • Track total spend on green products (49.3% / 14%) • Track total spend on green certified suppliers  (40.6% / 15%) • Clearly promote green products in search results (46.4% / 18%) • Filter search results to only show green products (46.4% / 10%) Outstanding progress in a five year period

  18. Institutional Challenges & Priorities Summary • Institutions know what the challenges are and what to do about them generally. • The difficult economic conditions for Higher Education are showing little effects on the sustainability movement, however existing Green Procurement efforts have remained largely unchanged. • 60.4% reported NO change in their programs vs. 54% in 2010 • The focal point is changing on institutions for a variety of reasons: the level of sustainability uptake on campus, the success of education & outreach, and the expectations of students.

  19. Procurement Processes • Which green certifications are being used? • EnergyStar has led the way and has grown from 55% in 2009 to 80.7% in 2013. • Green Seal ha(15.7%) and GRA (2.1%). • Three of them show great recognition and use and one not so much. • No certification are in use s held the second position and continues to grow 25% in 2009 to 37.9% in 2013. • Green Products continues in the third position with a growth rate of 17% in 2009 to 25% in 2013. • We added four new certifications in 2013; EPEAT (33.6%), FSC (25%), EcoLogo at 41.7% of institutions.

  20. Procurement Processes • Where is green procurement focused in commodities? • We made some big additions to the selections in 2013 and the responses confirm that those were good choices. • Leading products; paper products (83.6%) , office supplies and equipment (72.9%), computers and office furnishings (36.4%) remain in the top seven commodities. • They were joined by newcomers; janitorial supplies (60%), appliances (52.1%), and renewable energy (40.7%). • Other newcomers did well; examples are construction materials (35.7%), REC’s (40.7%) and local food (35%). • We did observe a small shift, when presented with both local food and organic food as a choice, the organic response was cut in half.

  21. Procurement Processes • Where is green procurement focused in the services sector? • Our five year leaders recycling/waste handling (77.1%) and Housekeeping/Cleaning (71.4%) remained numbers 1 and 2. • “Newcomer” new construction earned the third spot (60%). • Landscaping and Food Services were fourth and fifth (49.7% and 45%)

  22. Procurement Processes What % of total procurement spending is on green products and materials? • Data indicates things are better. Yet 61.4% cannot tell what the percentage of spend is it means we have a long way to go. • “If you don’t measure it you can’t manage it” comes to mind. • Obviously some institutions who are doing well because 16.7% report more than 20% of total spend is on green products and services. Additionally 13.6% report a spend greater than 10% and some 8.6% fall between 0 and 10%. • The marketplace is being affected and that there is some shift occurring. It’s just that we don’t have the systems to capture, record, and report the spend.

  23. Procurement Processes • Returning to measurement, more than 43.6 or 50%% of respondents still do not report internally or externally. • Internally this was an important year. The never report category fell to 43.6% in 2013 from a high of 54%, and quarterly and annual reporting increased. • Unfortunately, that is not the case for external reporting where 50% of the respondents still never report. However, that is a downward trend moving down from 64% in 2009. • More institutions are under pressure to increase transparency and the green spend is a part of that broader trend. • It does not appear that there is strong differentiation in whether respondents were large or small, public or private.

  24. Procurement Processes How would you rate the success of your green procurement initiatives? • We think we are getting better. • The five year trend is a gradual downgrading of almost 5%. • There is and increase of 4.1% in D’s and F’s. • And an increase of 10% in A’s and B’s. • This is an encouraging trend only in perception, if only 35% have formal assessment tools as indicated in Q24 we don’t have any data to support these perceptions beyond that of the respondents. This cannot be totally discounted and needs further data to support and reinforce the perceptions.

  25. Procurement Processes • 39.6% of responses indicated there was no training available. One has to wonder how green procurement initiatives are going to expand and excel if this deficiency continues to exist. • Further, 25.9% indicated what training they do receive to be either poor or fair. • On the other end of the spectrum those identifying the training received as above average or outstanding, 9.4% 2013 compared with 4% in 2010, tell another story. • It makes no difference whether you public or private and/or big or small. Training is an issue. • There is a clear void. If green procurement is to thrive and its potential, help is needed from outside the institutions to get there.

  26. Procurement Processes • How do members measure the success of their green procurement efforts? • 2013 respondents said that 65% of them had no formal measurement system. The results are quite dismal frankly. • However, that is an improvement over the starting point of 77% five years ago. • But we wonder how long this can go on without any data to support the efforts by the department? • 20% do measure using percentage of spend on products and that number is only an increase of 5% from the 2009. • 15% use a cost savings methodology and 8.6% use percentage of unit volume method.

  27. Procurement Processes • 53% of respondents have a green procurement champion available to them, and • 41% of respondents felt that the green procurement champion was effective. Champions work! • If you don’t have one, get one, if that fails become one!!

  28. Procurement Processes New Questions • Has the higher education sector embraced the USGBC's LEED for new construction (NC) through campus policy? • Yes (61.9%) and we suspect that the number may be larger in following years based upon the 20.9% who did not know. • Has the higher education sector employed the USGBC's LEED for existing buildings (EB) process to certify existing buildings? • Yes (47.1%) with a “don’t know” response of 29%. • Is your campus involved in a fossil fuel divestment campaign with its endowment holdings? • The “yes” response rate was 9.3%, while the “no” rate was 70.5%. • Periodically there are hot topics and we felt this was one worth testing the waters on.

  29. Procurement Processes Summary • No major shifts in focus for the buying of green products or services (new items help sharpen focus), but certifications are continuing their growth in importance for defining ‘green’ and for measuring progress. • Nearly 1/3 of respondents do not know critical information about their institutions strategic sustainability activities • Green Procurement Training is a major issue and has not improved. • No training is available for 39.6% of the respondents (vs. 33% in 2010) • 25.9% of the respondents self evaluate their training as POOR or FAIR (vs. 34% in 2010) • Purchasing professionals reported a massive shift in the ability of software systems to assist them and the users in advocating, tracking, and verifying green products and services claims. This is the best news we could have hoped for. • Green Procurement Champions are Effective!

  30. Overall Conclusions • The lack of measurement throughout the process is a weakness that cannot be ignored. • Green procurement does not deserve to be sabotaged by a lack of transparency and systems weaknesses. • People are our most valuable resource we must invest in their ongoing professional development to succeed. • 2013 was another year of belt tightening, but the Sustainability movement is trying to entrench itself in the fabric of our institutions.

  31. Overall Conclusions • Again more schools reported to have a Green Procurement Policy than in the years before. • AASHE is growing in its leadership and guidance. STARS is gaining widespread acceptance. • Likely the biggest move forward this year is that technology infrastructure continues to be put in place to support the movement. • We still have a long way to go in our ability to measure and report, our available training and our actual results. • 2013 was our lowest level of response (139), but we look forward to 2014.

  32. Thank You & Please give us your 2014 response THANK YOU PARTICIPANTS OF THE 2013 NAEP GREEN PROCUREMENTSURVEY NAEP Director of Sustainable Leadership Byeoman@c40.org

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