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Green Procurement
When you need to acquire products, you can ensure you’re doing so ecologically by
engaging in green procurement. This requires an organization to perform an assessment
of the environmental consequences of a product at the various stages of its life cycle. This
means considering how the product was made, how it will be transported and used, and
how it will be ultimately discarded.
A good green procurement program will include these steps:

• Get organizational support Policies and procedures need to be changed to
accommodate such a change, and the organization needs to be completely on-board.
Those responsible for making purchasing decisions must be involved in the
implementation process, because their suggestions and support are crucial.
• Conduct a self-evaluation Take a look at your current purchasing practices. This
gives you a starting benchmark and will help you clarify what you purchase, how
much you purchase, where it comes from, and how much it costs. This gives you
a baseline so you can measure the success of your green procurement efforts.
• Set goals Set big goals that have specific measurements.
• Develop a strategy Once you set the goals, figure out how you will reach those
goals. Identify how you will implement changes necessary to reach those goals. You
need to determine both short- and long-term solutions. Identify the products and
vendors you want to work with.
• Run a pilot project Don’t jump into it all at once. Start small and run a pilot
project. By starting small, you can see where the bumps are in the road and you can
then figure out how to implement the program better, in a larger fashion.
• Implement the plan When you put your green procurement plan in place, you
will have to assign accountability and develop a communications plan that
addresses employees, customers, suppliers, partners, and the public.
• Review the program You want to periodically review your green procurement
program to make sure you’re still getting what you want. At regular times, look at
whether the plan is meeting its stated goals and objectives. This review should also
look at your organization’s changing environmental goals.

Just-in-Time Buying
Not to keep banging the same drum, but Dell features another attribute that can help your
organization. Just-in-time buying reduces the sheer amount of product in your warehouses.
Rather than have a million connifilin pins on the shelves waiting to be installed in your
gonkulators, set it up so that the connifilin pins are delivered right before you need to
install them.
Dell does this with its computers. Rather than have warehouses bursting at the seams
with product, the company has a system in place where, when a certain component is
running low in stock, new ones are shipped. Dell builds computers to order so that there
aren’t built-out machines waiting to be purchased, or facing obsolescence.
Of course, for just-in-time buying to work right, you need reliable vendors and a good
system in place to let the vendor know you need more product. But the benefits can be huge.
You save money because you’re not warehousing so much product. You don’t need as
much real estate to store product, and you’re not buying more than you potentially need.