As guided by the City’s Sustainable Procurement Policy, the City of Portland aims to take a comprehensive approach to procuring goods and services such that environmental and social impacts are incorporated into procurement decisions along with traditional fiscal considerations. While the scope of this work affects a large variety of City purchases, the following data is a green spend snapshot from those City contracts where vendor usage reports are available.
Office Furniture
In Fiscal Year 2020-2021, the City purchased over $1 million of office furniture, of which 73% met one or more of the following requirements/standards:
- California standard specification 01350, indoor air quality requirements for building materials
- Business + Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association's (BIFMA) level™certification
- Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) Healthy Interiors criteria
- Cradle to Cradle certification
Office Paper
Of the City's purchase of white, cut-sheet, 20lb copy/printer paper (by volume) in Fiscal Year 2020-2021:
- 58% was 100% post-consumer waste (PCW) recycled content paper
- 26% was 30-50% PCW recycled content paper; and
- 16% was virgin paper.
The benefits associated with our purchase of recycled content paper instead of virgin paper include:
- saving 185 trees; and
- reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 69 metric tons.
Paper Use Reduction: Paper use (volume of paper purchased) was down 70% in FY2020-2021 compared to FY2018-2019 (the last fully non-pandemic FY).
Benefits calculated using the Environmental Paper Network Paper Calculator Version 4.0.
Office Electronics
The City has committed to purchasing green electronics, defined as being either ENERGY STAR certified or EPEAT registered electronics. In Fiscal Year 2019-2020, 99% of the City's office electronics purchases (by spend and as defined by the following product categories) were green products. The following breaks this achievement down by product category:
- 91% Desktops
- 97% Monitors
- 98% Notebooks
- 100% Tablets
- 91% Standard Printers, Multi-Function Devices, & Scanners
- 100% Mobile "Smart" Phones
- 100% Servers
The benefits associated with our purchase of green electronics (over the lifetime of the products) include:
- 0.73 million kWh in energy use reduction
- 201 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions reduction
- $32,450 dollars in electricity cost savings
For desktops, monitors, notebooks, tablets, mobile phones, and servers: benefits calculated using the Green Electronic Council's EPEAT Benefits Calculator, accessed December 2021. For multi-function devices and printers: benefits calculated using the EPA's EEBC for Imaging Equipment accessed December 2021.
Office Supplies
In Fiscal Year 2020-21, 46% of the City's office supplies purchases from its office supplies contractor, Office Depot, were "green" products as determined by the Office Depot Green Business Review Report for the City's account. Note: this does not include most white copy/printer paper as that is provided under a different contract.