Conversations on Website Conversion discussion

Like a lot of other greening practices, the key to greening your purchasing is research. Research first the things that you already purchase to establish a baseline to measure any possible improvement from—if you don’t know where you started, you can’t know where you’ve gone! Remember that the “greenness” of an item isn’t just a measure of the efficiency of a product in use; it also encompasses the energy it took to produce that item. The chapter provides a lot of links to online information that is applicable to purchasing, from ENERGY STAR and EPA guidelines to government websites describing the tax incentives for upgrading to greener equipment.

The chapter also discusses establishing a green purchasing policy. This will be an important part of your green mission: showing an ongoing commitment to getting and keeping your company green. Examine your current purchasing practices. If this is too much to concentrate on, choose just one aspect of your purchasing such as cleaning supplies or paper. How green are you right now? What space for improvement is there? Look at the steps on pages 240-242, and think about implementing a purchasing plan for those products.

Good point - analyze purchasing practices one segment at a time. There are facets to this internal audit as well. It is not just green products but your need for products, your usage of products and your disposal of used products.

Greening Your Small Business - has certainly opened my eyes to easy ways to go green. My compact florescent is on!

This chapter gave a great framework for green purchasing. The question came to my mind, "Where to start on the green purchasing journey?" The difficulty lies in figuring out where to start.

It will work for me to analyze each purchasing segment one and a time and see where opportunities for improvement are and then take action.