Green procurement: Good news waiting to be told

Summit, Mar 2001 by Todd, Dave

For all the emphasis the federal government has placed in recent years on taking more "environmentally friendly" approaches to planning, procurement and managing its day-to-day operations, there is one glaring gap: Little emphasis is placed on telling this story to Canadians.

In many ways Canada is seen as an international leader in striving to "green" the way it does public purchasing, but oddly enough few Canadians know about it. This is despite the fact that the federal government, in its own words, currently has about "224,000 employees, 21.4 million hectares of land under direct management, 59,000 buildings and facilities, 25,000 motor vehicles and spends more than $8 billion annually in purchases of goods and services." And some senior federal officials describe Ottawa's current annual spending power for domestic goods and services as closer to $12 billion than $8 billion.

Since 1995 the government has won widespread recognition internationally as a leader in devising strategies to leverage its purchasing power and achieve greener purchasing standards across the economy. Canada is regarded by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), whose secretarygeneral is former Canadian federal cabinet minister Don Johnston, as a model nation among advanced industrialized countries in developing public sector green procurement practices. So the public relations lapse that fails to tap into what is in many ways an obvious "good news" story is even more odd. The lack of an effective master strategy for engaging Canadians has left approaches targeted to reduce greenhouse gas emission levels and other pollution abatement priorities largely unrecognized by the public.

Stories about how government and business are cooperating together could be a big win for Canadian authorities domestically, at a time of rising concern about the state of the world's environment. All the more so as the Chretien government can claim few successes on the international stage in terms of convincing other countries, especially European nations, to go along with its preferred approach on meeting Kyoto Protocol goals to limit the impact of global warming in future decades.

The clearly fragmented federal message, at least the lack of a visibly effective one domestically, suggests a serious lack of overall strategic direction or leadership. Ottawas pursuit of its "green objective," leveraging clout arising out of annual federal procurement spending,is marked by a diffusion of effort that devolves policy management into inconsequence. The result is that dozens of departments and agencies take individual approaches within the loose bounds of broad cross-government directives. It looks like a classic case of everyone wanting to take the glory and little of the responsibility for the day-to-day work of making things happen.

A handful of stalwart federal officials at the top and at mid-management levels are left holding the bag because little is happening to effect greener procurement, at least in comparison to funds and bureaucratic time invested in the effort.

At both the national and at lower levels of government, authorities routinely argue behind the scenes - that a strategy of commanding higher environmental quality standards through environmentally enlightened buying choices ought to be a priority in determining how taxpayers' dollars are spent on goods and services.

Interviews with a range of federal officials at various levels demonstrate that the lack of a consistent set of national standards and central flow point for enabling suppliers of goods and services to work with federal authorities across government has obscured several successes under a federal government-sponsored environmental action program.

A classic case is Interface Flooring Systems of Belleville, Ont., a subsidiary of Dupont, Inc., which has pioneered a model way of saving the federal government money while protecting the environment. Essentially, the longterm deal - with Environment Canada the primary partner - involves Interface providing carpeting for federal buildings that, at the end of their wear, the company will take back at their own expense with minimal cost to the environment.

Interfaces carpeting, made by one of the least environmentally invasive industrial techniques associated with any rug product anywhere, is a world-class "best practice" success story. Since the mid-1990s, usage of the technique has led to reductions in factory air pollution emissions and energy production needs on the order of two-thirds of what used to be the case. Industrial waste output has been slashed by about 90 percent.

But how many companies that could similarly benefit from such a high-profile association know about this achievement, or others like it?

Jean Bilodeau is director general of administration for Environment Canada and is Canadas representative on OECD and United Nations Environment Programme bodies concerned with greener procurement. In essence, he is the Canadian government's top strategist on environmentally sensitive energy procurement matters from a broad public policy development perspective. The minister he reports to, David Anderson, is also a committed environmentalist.