Environmental purchasing trials
You may wish to conduct trials of environmentally preferable goods or services to satisfy yourself as to their fitness for purpose and overall Value for Money.
Many organisations have taken this approach and often their experiences (and data) can be useful aids to your environmental purchasing initiatives. For example, your cleaners could trial less hazardous cleaning products for a preliminary assessment of their suitability and value.
Many suppliers are more than happy to provide trial samples of their goods or services if this may lead to subsequent business.
How to develop a trial:
1. Choose your product or service.
You may do this on the basis of a risk assessment, on costs, or on staff interest. Your EMS can be a useful guide as to what product or service may be useful to trial.
2. Identify suppliers and project partners.
You may be able to build on current relationships with suppliers, look for suppliers, or some suppliers will come to you.
3. Research other trials of this or similar products or services.
Many organisations have developed and implemented environmental purchasing policies through trials. The US EPA has some excellent examples of pilot projects at their website. See the Links page for more information.
4. Scope the objectives, location and duration of your trial.
A clear set of objectives (such as comparing the operating and standby energy consumption of two different products), at a defined site, and for a definite period, will assist the credibility of your trial and its results. Your suppliers may be excellent sources of information about scoping a trial.
5. Decide on how you will measure and monitor performance during the trial.
Measuring and monitoring the performance of the new good or service during the trial is very important. Be sure to make it clear who will be responsible for collecting the performance data, and designate a backup person. You may need to coordinate a trial with other areas of your organisation.
6. Get internal support, particularly if there will be costs for the trial.
This is crucial to the planning and implementation of a trial. Success in a trial may pave the way for introducing the new good or service. If you have an Environment Committee to support your EMS, consider using that to garner support for the trial. If you can have a member of the Executive inform staff of the trial (including why you are doing it) that can smooth the way quite well.
7. Finalise agreements with any project partners.
Be clear to your project partners about the objectives, scope, method, duration, cost and staffing of the trial. Put things down in writing for sign off by the parties involved. This will help clarify the outline of the trial for all parties, and can be a common reference if changes need to be made to the trial while it is underway.
8. Conduct trial.
Follow the plan as agreed, but be prepared to adapt if the actual operating conditions for the trial differ markedly from what you had planned. For example, if there are major changes in building occupancy during the trial, you may need to correct for this.
9. Evaluate performance.
If you have followed step 5, you will have built the evaluation method into the development and then conduct of your trial. Following that method should provide good data on how well the trial has gone. You may also wish to survey staff or contractors on their experience of the trial. This can be done by a variety of methods, including telephone polling, an email questionnaire, or focus groups. Staff involvement in evaluating the performance of the trial can be crucial in getting support for introducing a successfully trialled good or service into your organisation.
10. Report internally (and let DEH know how it's gone).
Once you have evaluated your performance, tell people how the trial has gone. Your intranet site can be an excellent method for doing this. Reporting the results of the trial back to the supplier or contractor can be beneficial for all parties involved, particularly if a decision is made to go to the market for ongoing supply of the trialled good or service. Letting DEH know how the trial has gone can help you publicise your achievements to a broader audience. Make sure that Privacy Act requirements are met for publicising your achievements.
11. If successful, introduce the new product or service into your operations.
You may be able to introduce a successfully trialled product or service into your operations via a variation to an existing contract, or you may need to enter into a new contract. You may wish to develop a program for rolling out the new purchase to your various sites around the country, or you can conduct additional trials at some of those sites. It is important to continue to conduct follow up on the performance of the new good or service, to ensure that the benefits achieved during the trial continue to be delivered.
Trial tips:
- Think about your support systems. If you have a contract for outsourcing IT services, make sure that they are on board with any product or service trial that is linked to your IT system. This is especially important for trialling products such as email faxes, solid ink printers, networked digital copy stations and workflow imaging systems.
- Budget for trials. Consider putting in a budget bid for funds to support an ongoing program of purchasing trials. If you can obtain agreement with your Executive that cost savings from successful trials come back to your budget, you will be able to invest in new goods or services.
Examples:
- The Australian National University (ANU) has conducted a trial of dedicated LPG-fuelled vehicles.
- Know Your Paper: this guide, produced by Resource NSW, includes results from trials of recycled content and environmentally preferable papers available in Australia.
- The US EPA has conducted a wide range of trials as part of the Environmentally Preferable Purchasing (EPP) Program. See their website for more information.
- The International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) are conducting a Green Purchasing Pilot Project with 10 Australian local councils.
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