Section 9: MEASURING AND MARKETING YOUR SUCCESS
A. PURPOSE
B.  FOUR EASY STEPS
C.  CALCULATING BENEFITS
D.  SAMPLE CALCULATOR

A. PURPOSE 

Efforts to measure the success of an overall program, or even an individual contract purchase, often are difficult because of the added time required to compile and document this information.  However, it may be the single most important thing you can do if you want to grow a strong and robust environmental purchasing program.  Measuring your success allows you to identify both the environmental and cost saving benefits of your efforts, arm you with information so that you can recognize and reward outstanding achievers as a means to inspire others, identify any problem areas that may need correcting, and meet reporting and record keeping requirements that may also serve to justify any additional funding that may be required to maintain the program.

Below are four simple steps in establishing a process to measure your results.  It is recommended to start small with product purchases that have a relatively high likelihood of success.  Learning through experience is best teaching you can receive and early successes will provide credibility for future efforts within your organization.

Back to Top
B. FOUR EASY STEPS

  • Identify what you would like to measure and establish goals to meet those metrics.  Such measurements may include an increasing in purchasing volume or dollars, the number of contract designations, cost savings, or environmental benefits.  Goals can be defined based on your desired metric; the number of new EPP contracts you would like to issue, the types of recycled materials you may want to target, or a certain level of purchasing (dollars) you want to achieve.
  • Establish a current baseline on which to measure progress.  The information to be included in the baselines will depend on some degree upon the goals you have set, but generally will include such data as the type and number of products currently purchased, the cost of those products, the percentage of recycled content (if applicable), the current process and cost to dispose or recycle that product, the energy and water requirements, etc.
  • Determine the means of record keeping to document the measurement.  This is likely the most difficult of the four steps as no one method is without shortfalls.  If your agency or department has a central accounting system through which all transactions are to be processed, this is perhaps the most reliable means of collecting the majority of the purchases.  It is then incumbent upon the central purchasing office to include the identification of environmentally preferable products within that system so that this information can be broken out for reporting purposes from the other purchases.  If this is not available to you, or you would like to have a “back-up” system to catch any glitches, the advice is to relay on your suppliers.  Some states such as Massachusetts, require that all vendors awarded a contract must submit annual reporting information and they must break out the EPPs within those reports.  This enables the Commonwealth to obtain data on municipal purchases not captured by the central system and get accurate reporting on the recycled content in products, take back options, disposal costs, etc.  However, not all vendors are as timely in submitting their reports as others, so it is helpful to have some assistance in following up to secure the information needed.
  • Reward achievers.  Once the information has been obtained, don't miss the opportunity to reward your participants and market your success particularly the higher levels of your department.  Recognition can be given through something as simple as a thank you letter, credit toward an employee's performance review, or more publicly via a special awards program.  Whatever means you chose should help build support for your program and encourage cooperation for future efforts.
Back to Top
C. CALCULATING BENEFITS

Purchasers should also strive to use their tracking data to demonstrate project success to your management, other co-workers and to stakeholders outside of the organization.  Take advantage of tools and resources to convert hard-to-understand metrics, such as kilowatt-hours or tons of waste, into vivid equivalents – numbers of cars removed from the road or numbers of trees saved.  A variety of such tools are already available on-line to render these calculations for multiple environmental attributes.

Some examples include:

  • Environmental Benefits Calculator designed by The Northeast Recycling Council, Inc. (NERC)  is an easy-to-use means of generating estimates of the environmental benefits of a study area, based on the tonnages of materials that are source reduced, reused, recycled, landfilled, or incinerated (includes waste-to-energy).
  • EnviroCalc is a downloadable spreadsheet-based tool designed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts EPP Purchasing Program  to estimate the environmental benefits of purchases of recycled-content and energy efficient products in a single tool.
  • EnergyStar Website, contains a number of calculators created to estimate the potential savings and payback period for purchases of energy efficient products.
  • Other calculators and tools are listed in the Resources section of the guide.

Back to Top
D.  SAMPLE CALCULATOR

Environmental benefit estimates and their “real life” equivalents presented in both “OUTPUT” tables were created using EnviroCalc based on the information provided by the Commonwealth's suppliers during the course of one Fiscal Year for purchases of energy efficient desktops, monitors and CFLs, recycled paper, plastic and mulch products, and re-refined motor oil and anti-freeze.

OUTPUT: Commonwealth of Massachusetts FY2006 Environmental Benefits
 

  Environmental Benefits Estimate Equivalent to....
Energy Savings 9,690,412 kWhrs Annual energy needs of 855 households
Carbon Dioxide Emissions 21,709 tons Annual tailpipe emissions of 4263 cars
Landfill space Savings 16,582 cubic yards 829 loaded garbage trucks
Number of Trees Saved 52,911 529 acres of wood plantation
Non-electrical energy savings 77,288 million BTUs Energy content of 13,325 barrels of oil
Weight of materials recycled 4,519 tons Annual solid waste generation of 2123 households

OUTPUT: Commonwealth of Massachusetts FY2006 Energy Cost Savings

 
Environmental benefit estimate
 Equivalent to…
Energy Cost Savings $1,065,945 13 MA EPP Program's budgets

Back to Top