Climate Action Plan Goals: Integrated Procure-to-Pay Solutions

Procurement CAP goals will be directed towards the following commodities, listed from high to low priority. Focus will remain on products available in the Marketplace-hosted catalog.

1. Office Supplies
2. Laboratory Supplies
3. Maintenance and Repair Operations (MRO) Supplies
4. Cleaning Supplies
5. Electronics

Relevant Actions include:

• Within the next two years, create campus-accessible Favorites Folders for environmentally prefereable products within each commodity

Although systematic changes and educational materials can help increase the proportion of environmentally preferable purchasing, behavioral change is largely based on awareness and education. Procurement & Contracts will not only produce the necessary resources for campus to learn about and act upon EPP, but also assume responsibility for ensuring that those resources are properly used and well established.

Relevant Actions include:

• Supplier Engagement: Leverage buying power to increase demand for sustainable alternatives, as well as information supporting environmental claims. This will place pivotal pressure on suppliers to emphasize the environmental impacts and information quality of their products, particularly those in the Marketplace-hosted catalog
• Perfecting Promotion Strategies: Perform an assessment on methods currently used for promoting environmentally preferable products. Test for effectiveness before and after promotion strategies are paired with training, in order to isolate the marginal effect of promotion strategies.

While the UCSD Integrated Procure-to-Pay Solutions department is the primary party responsible for developing many of the action items and goals, maximizing impact will engage all relevant parties, including all campus shoppers. Procurement is responsible for updating the progress and tracking of goals.

Relevant Actions

• Maintain (an) FTE staff person(s) whose job functions primarily support sustainable purchasing
• Maintain membership on the Climate Action Plan Task Force
• Track goals and publish progress annually

Few goals come without challenges

• Changes in behavior, perception, and preference on low-impact products cannot be mandated, only guided, by Procurement
• Varying industry standards for environmentally preferable products may present difficulties in supplier engagement, specifically with commodities that do not have existing products
• Due to the lack of sufficient and standardized informational data in previous years, it is unclear where a baseline should be established

• Although consumerism and purchasing is directly related to environmental degradation, procurement of goods and services is necessary to the function of our university as an educational, research, and operational institution. Therefore, the purpose of these objectives is to provide guidance for purchasing decisions made by campus personnel.