Many companies take one of two strategies in launching a Green procurement initiative. Either purchasing takes the lead and directs internal customers on how to be more environmentally friendly in product selection, or management issues a Green mandate and purchasing develops its portion of the overall corporate strategy. Both strategies can work well, but in both cases, the internal customers often feel left out of the decision-making process.

However, there is a third strategy that may, in the long run, lead to the most successful and long-term results. This involves the procurement department piggybacking on existing internal Green initiatives, but is driven by the internal customers first, rather than a mandate. A good example of this strategy has been taking place at Seattle Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center, which has a very strong commitment to Green procurement.

Sustainable procurement at Seattle Children's Hospital is the outgrowth of a grassroots, voluntary program that began in various pockets of the hospital several years ago, and which were then eventually coordinated.

“Our goal is to become the Greenest hospital in the U.S.,” says Dennis Gawlik, who is responsible for non-clinical sourcing at the Seattle-based facility. Gawlik is no novice, either. He is a member of the ISM Committee on Sustainability and Social Responsibility, and teaches at the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, which offers an MBA in sustainable business and weaves sustainability through all its courses, Gawlik says.

The Green procurement program Gawlik helped design at Seattle Children's was implemented in several logistical steps.

1. Find the leaders. “The best place to start a program like this is to identify an area in the organization where a passion for sustainability already exists,” explains Gawlik. Several years ago, Sue Heffernan, a clinical nursing specialist at the hospital, began developing an interest in Green initiatives. At the time, she was able to identify a number of pockets of Green activities that were already in existence in the hospital, but she realized very few people outside of the individual departments knew about these efforts, and they were all operating independently.
2. Recognition. The next step was to provide some recognition to the people who were already involved in Green and sustainable initiatives, such as recycling. Certainly, the hospital already had some recycling programs, such as recycling cooking fats, cans, bottles, plastics, computer monitors, paper, and other supplies. However, individuals in some departments were doing even more on their own. “The basic key to Green success is having dedicated people,” says Gawlik. “Most of our initiatives are the result of having concerned people in various parts of the hospital who want to do the right thing. It is not their official job. It is something they actually do extra on their own.” Once these individuals were identified, they were given the title of owner so they could be properly recognized.
3. Coordinate expansion. Once Heffernan began working with these individuals, she launched an initiative to begin to coordinate their efforts and activities. “One goal became to expand these initiatives from the individual departments to the hospital as a whole to make all of these efforts a larger component of what everyone does,” reports Gawlik. “That is, once you begin, other synergistic activities will come into play, allowing you to expand the efforts.”
4. Recruit the team. As Green activities began to expand beyond individual department walls, Heffernan and others in the hospital, including Rich Grady, created a sustainability team and named Green ambassadors in every department. The idea was to get people from the different departments working together across silos on sustainability initiatives. Heffernan and her colleagues provide information to these ambassadors on what other departments are doing, and the ambassadors then relay this information to their individual departments for consideration to implement.
5. Publicize the program. Another critical key to building a Green culture is to publicize the efforts of the individuals and departments, which helps build awareness of the programs, Gawlik says. The best way to do this is to identify and measure what people are doing, and then publicize it to everyone else in the hospital through things like newsletters, flyers and intranet sites. “We have found that, even when little successes are documented and then publicized, the results are very powerful,” Gawlik says.
6. Bring it home. As Green and sustainable initiatives began to catch hold throughout the hospital, Catherine Sisk, the director of supply chain at Seattle Children's, and Dan Salmonsen, purchasing and logistics manager, launched the hospital's Green Purchasing Policy. Now, instead of having to force Green products on an unprepared internal customer base, the procurement department was responding to a naturally growing demand for such products from the internal customers themselves.
   As a result, buyers and others in the department are now involved in initiatives designed to source greener and more sustainable products from suppliers. “For example, we now purchase cleaning chemicals with low levels of toxicity,” says Gawlik. The hospital is also phasing out medical products with DEHP (a plasticizer) and PVC (polyvinyl chloride).
7. Find the right suppliers. Identifying the suppliers to support Green procurement is critical to success, according to Gawlik. “This involves doing your homework and identifying the suppliers that offer Green or sustainable products,” he states. He admits that it is usually easy to find suppliers that claim to offer these products. However, it is very important to take the time to verify the claims, as many of them may not be much more than marketing and advertising fluff.
8. Sign them up. To ensure suppliers get on the Green bus, Gawlik says procurement needs to use the appropriate wording in supplier agreements and contracts and track their adherence to the agreements. “We measure suppliers to make sure they do what they say they will do,” he says.
9. Review. The final step is to create what Gawlik calls a continuous loop, which asks the question: “How can we get better?” “Once you have the data, you can begin to improve on it,” he explains.

Seattle Children's strategy, according to Gawlik, is an admittedly slower, more organic way of getting into Green procurement, but he believes it tends to build more short-term and long-term commitment, because it is based on a “pull” model from users, rather than a “push” model from a procurement or management mandate.

See also: Green Buying: How procurement is managing environmental demands