The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Langley Research Center (LaRC) located in Hampton, VA., has been instrumental in shaping aerospace history for eight decades. Established in 1917 as the first national civil aeronautics laboratory, Langley has become a comprehensive, world-class center for aeronautics, atmospheric sciences, and space technology. Langley has approximately 4300 employees, including contractors, and over 300 buildings on the Center. Many of these employees work in an office environment and use products that could contain recycled material.

Federal agencies are required by section 6002 of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and Executive Order 12873, "Federal Acquisition, Recycling, and Waste Prevention," to buy certain products containing recovered materials. The "Comprehensive Guideline for Procurement of Products Containing Recovered Materials" (CPG) was issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to designate the 24 recycled content products for which federal agencies needed to establish a preference program. Some of these items are used daily in an office setting, such as: paper and paper products, non-paper products like, plastic desktop accessories, toner cartridges, binders, plastic trash bags, office waste receptacles, and office recycling containers.

NASA LaRC designed an affirmative procurement pilot program that has accomplished positive feedback and results. This article describes the LaRC affirmative procurement pilot program and highlights the procedures for implementation, suggestions for overcoming barriers, tracking and monitoring success and education/outreach proposals. Though there is no one way to design and implement a preference program, LaRC’s procedures can be used by any installation to implement preference programs for all current and future designated items on the CPG.

NASA LaRC staff identified five goals that they wanted to accomplish with the affirmative procurement pilot program.

The 7-step program that NASA LaRC took to accomplish these goals follows.

Obtaining management support is instrumental in proposing changes to an existing system. Management needs to be educated on environmental regulations and the importance of having a policy statement or directive for your installation. NASA LaRC developed an Environmental Alert (i.e. policy statement) that notified employees of their responsibilities in complying with affirmative procurement regulations. The Environmental Alert, acting as a Center commitment, also made it possible for procurement personnel to carry through affirmative procurement proceedings in our existing procurement system. The policy statement shows the Center’s commitment and the responsibilities of all participating employees. For best results, the policy statement should include all parties buying, using , and providing products and services to the federal government. The policy statement should also apply to on-site and off-site contractor staff. This may require modifying contract language to state that contractors must follow the installation’s environmental policy.

Before implementing a preference program, it is important to be familiar with your installation’s procurement procedures. Understanding the procurement process will allow you to design a preference program and track its success with the least interruptions to daily transactions. In addition, developing a good working relationship with procurement officials will ease everyone’s implementation efforts. Educating procurement personnel on affirmative procurement regulations and having a policy statement for the Center allowed environmental and procurement staff to incorporate these policies into an evolving procurement system.

Decentralizing procurement procedures with credit card purchases at LaRC had made implementing an effective preference program difficult until procurement personnel established a centralized procurement system for office products. The on-line, just-in-time procurement system was developed in June 1996 to conveniently offer LaRC employees office supplies through a single vendor. We found that working with a single vendor for office products has facilitated the implementation of this pilot project. Employees have the choice to purchase products from the existing vendor through the on-line system, GSA, or from external means like office product stores. The information system designed for the just-in-time program simplifies purchases by automating labor intensive tasks and provides an efficient and accurate means of record keeping for the Center.

Employees need to be familiar with affirmative procurement policies. The person/people designing and implementing the affirmative procurement project need to be familiar with their "customers", i.e. the purchasers and users of the EPA designated items. The third step taken at LaRC was to identify the facilities that purchase specific EPA designated items and develop education material or guidelines detailing minimum content levels of recovered contents for those products. Specializing guidelines to specific users will decrease the confusion to purchasers on specifications. For example, at LaRC automobile tires and engine oils are only purchased at one location, the motorpool. We designed educational guidelines for motorpool staff that focused on retread tires and re-refined engine oil specifications. Education is instrumental to overcome many perceived feelings on products with recovered content being "inferior" to virgin products. Certain employees may take more "convincing" than others to use the product, even though the recovered content product meets all the necessary quality certifications. It is beneficial to take the time to work with these employees to give them something they are willing to use and are satisfied with the results.

Obtaining a volunteer office is the first step in establishing a pilot project to test and evaluate environmentally preferable products. NASA LaRC calls their volunteer office for testing and evaluating these products the "Model Office". The Model Office at NASA LaRC is the Electronics Technology Branch which consists of about 40 people in a research and office environment. In addition to testing and evaluating products to meet affirmative procurement requirements, the office participates in waste minimization and recycling activities. The Model Office uses electronic mail to transmit messages, saves documents to disks instead of making hard copies, shares filing systems instead of duplicating documents, reuses office supplies, makes double-sided copies, and recycles white paper, mixed paper and cardboard on a daily basis. This office is a showcase for other facilities on the Center and is used as an example in many pollution prevention and waste minimization outreach efforts.

Management and employees of the Model Office needed to be aware of the procedures and goals of the pilot project. This was accomplished through outreach materials, briefings, and question/answer sessions. Educated employees execute ideas with less resistance and provide constructive feedback needed to implement preference programs that will work for the employees.

NASA LaRC funded the project from an account generated from recycling proceeds that is used to support pollution prevention and recycling activities for the Center. The account provided the seed money (approximately $1200) for the purchase of 214 products with recovered content to be tested by the volunteer office. These funds make it possible for LaRC to establish pilot programs for EPA designated items which provide economic and environmental benefits.

An inventory must be taken of the products procured by your volunteer office. This will allow you to identify products that are offered with recovered content and are comparable to existing virgin products. NASA LaRC used the following guidelines in identifying products that contained recovered content that were to be tested in the pilot project.

1. Make sure the item with recovered content meets the required specifications stated in the Recovered Material Advisory Notice (RMAN).
2. Choose an item with recovered content that is comparable to the virgin product to make certain you are testing and evaluating equal items.
3. Check the items with recovered content to be sure the product can be recycled in existing recycling programs. As an example, mailing labels and other sticky products should be water soluble to permit recycling.
4. Choose an item with recovered content that comes within a determined price range of the virgin product. NASA LaRC set a range of 10% of the price of the product, i.e. the recovered content product could cost up to 110% of the price of the virgin product.

NASA LaRC did not want to choose a product with recovered content that would not fit into existing operations. Following the steps above ensured the volunteer office tested and evaluated products that would become part of their daily use and did not waste time on products that were not suitable. The vendor catalogs’ Recycled Product Index allowed us to quickly choose products for testing. Other installations may want to start with the Defense Logistics Agency’s Environmental Products Catalog or the GSA Environmental Products Guide to identify products suitable for their existing systems.

Developing universal evaluation criteria to judge the alternative products is advantageous due to simplicity, consistency, and opportunity for useful feedback in order to decide procurement options. NASA LaRC uses durability, performance, appearance, and cost to compare products with recycled content to their virgin counterparts. It is important to minimize subjectivity when choosing evaluation criteria. As an example, grainy compared to a non-grainy texture provides less insight to making a procurement decision than acceptable versus not acceptable appearance. Setting standards that must be met in order to purchase a product forces the user, or evaluator, to define what is important to achieve product satisfaction. Receiving evaluations from a variety of employees on one particular product forms a consensus from which an effective procurement decision can be made.

NASA LaRC developed an evaluation form that employees of the Model Office would fill out comparing the product with recovered content versus the virgin counterpart during daily use. The evaluation forms were collected and analyzed after three to six months of use. If the evaluations indicated that the recycled product performed the same or better than the virgin product, then the recycled product was determined reliable. If the evaluation indicated that the recycled product was acceptable to one person and not acceptable to another, both the recycled and virgin products would be offered to the employees. Recycled products that failed or were not suitable for daily use were disregarded and not included in the LaRC procurement system.

A Web page was designed to show the progress of the Model Office. The Web page conveniently provides educational material and notifies other purchasers on the reliability of tested products. This page is linked to the NASA LaRC just-in-time internal procurement page. The top of the procurement Web page has an alerting message to inform employees of Executive Order (E.O.) 12873 and NASA LaRC requirements on affirmative procurement issues. Employees can not order through the on-line system without seeing the alerting message on NASA LaRC’s affirmative procurement policies.

The list of reliable products was then given to top management to decide, based on prices, if the product with recovered content would replace the virgin counterpart in the procurement system. Working with procurement personnel we have integrated the results and modified the on-line ordering process to include the results of the pilot project. This limits the purchaser to only the recycled products that have been proven reliable by fellow employees.

NASA LaRC’s Model Office has tested and evaluated 60 different products: 34 products were unanimously determined reliable and replaced their virgin counterparts; 22 products had mixed evaluations and are offered in addition to the virgin product; and four products were determined unreliable and were disregarded from further use. More reliable products with recovered content will be added to the procurement system as evaluation continues.

The just-in-time on-line system allows LaRC to incorporate affirmative procurement proceedings and program monitoring devices into the preference programs. The items with recovered content are "tagged" in the procurement system and monitored monthly. Monthly purchase reports indicate the quantity and cost of all products with recycled content that meet the required specifications. The graph below depicts the growth of the preference program for office products at NASA LaRC. The pilot project that started in June 1996 has increased the Center’s procurement costs of products with recovered content by a factor of five.

NASA LaRC has accomplished their goals for implementing a pilot affirmative procurement preference program for office products by following these seven steps. As with any proposed effort to change daily activities, there will be many challenges and barriers to overcome. Working with personnel to design a program that will fit their needs as well as comply with regulations helps ease implementation efforts. Employees will be more willing to work with individuals who are concerned with their needs than reacting to management mandates. It is important to remember that educated employees execute ideas with less resistance and provide constructive feedback. The challenges faced with incorporating environmentally preferred purchasing can be tackled by developing a strong partnership with procurement personnel. Because the concept of environmentally preferable purchasing is relatively new, it requires initiative from everyone in order to produce desired results. Tracking and monitoring of preference programs will ensure you are moving forward towards meeting your installation goals and assist you in acknowledging areas of concern. Automating these efforts will provide a less labor intensive and more efficient means of record keeping.

Starting small and progressing to larger preference programs, regularly educating and informing people of progress and changes, working through problems and correcting them promptly, and listening to everyone’s suggestions are all important in order to gain the support of participants. These ideas can assist installations in starting environmentally preferable preference programs for current and future EPA designated items.