Environmentally Preferable Purchasing (EPP)

Last Updated: March 20, 2019 1:01:03 PM PDT

Learn how Environmentally Preferable Purchasing helps your department and the environment.

Environmentally Preferable Purchasing (EPP) is defined as the procurement of items that have minimized or reduced environmental effects. The purpose of EPP is to give preference to environmentally preferred products whenever possible. The University of California Office of the President has included EPP in its sustainable practices policy guidelines (PDF), which include goals and implementation procedures.

Benefits of EPP

Environmental: Reduces & prevents waste, resource consumption, pollution/toxin exposure
Financial: Reduces costs including material, waste disposal, operating, maintenance, and replacement costs

Practices: Before making a purchase, consider the total cost of ownership, including environmental, maintenance and disposal costs

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Purchasing in Marketplace

Buying Green Products in

When searching for products in Marketplace, look for the green product flags below. Filter by Green Product Flags in order to only see green flagged products in your search results. Note: products flags only apply to hosted catalog searches (excludes Punchout and iRequest items).

Supplier identified that this product is made from recycled content.

See product description for percentages.

Suppler identified that this product is environmentally preferable.

See product description for specifications

UCSD Procurement & Contracts vetted the product and identified that the product meets our environmentally friendly standards

Quick Tip: Create an Advanced Search to see only the UCSD Green Flag products in your search results.

Buying Local

Look for the California supplier flag to find local, California suppliers . Buying local reduces fuel use from transporting goods.

Purchase from on-campus ret ailers, such as Core Bio Services, in Marketplace

Use Marketplace to Your Advantage

Store Packing Slips electronically to avoid printing & paper use: Marketplace Electronic Packing Slips

Consolidate Orders to reduce packaging waste

Shared Favorites Folder: A Shared Favorites Folder is a Favorites folder accessible to a group of multiple Marketplace users of your choice, making group purchases easier. To set up a Shared Favorites folder, fill out a Shared Favorites Request form (PDF) and send the form to the Marketplace Help Desk through ASK (login required)
Shared Carts: A Shared Cart is a Marketplace shopping cart that can be loaded and submitted by multiple Marketplace users, making group purchases easier. Learn More about Shared Carts in Marketplace
Why consolidate? To avoid unnecessary packaging waste (pictured below)

Other Purchasing Guidelines & Resources

End of Product Life

Purchasing comes with disposal responsibilities

Make sure you dispose of things properly whenever possible

Reuse

Extra chemicals? Donate to Chemcycle
Send excess university property to Surplus Sales. Surplus will sell back to UCSD or the community at a lower price.
- Inventorial equipment: See How to Send Equipment to Surplus Sales
- Not sure if property is inventorial equipment? See Equipment Management and Inventorial Equipment
Expanded Polystyrene (Styrofoam) Cooler Packaging and Gel Packs
- From Sigma-Aldrich: Instructions Here
- From Life Technologies: Drop off clean Life Technologies coolers AND gel packs next to the Core Bio Services receiving doors. CORE will return the coolers and gel packs to Life Technologies for reuse
- Non-Life Technologies gel packs: Please give them to a Core Bio Services sales associate at the front desk. CORE partners with UCSD's Athletic department to reuse gel packs among athletic training staff. Deliveries are made monthly

Recycle: See How to Recycle at UCSD

See a list of materials recyclable through Single Stream Recycling (blue bins on campus)
e-Waste
Toner Recycling via Materials Support Services
- To reduce toner waste, purchase High Capacity Toners, which have a higher page yield per cartridge and typically cost less to print per-page