Bates College
OP-11: Sustainable Procurement

Although individual departments have purchasing policies, there is no sweeping purchasing policy for the whole institution.

We use LCCA criteria for building materials, food products, paper, and electronics comprehensively. For building construction, we build to LEED Silver standards, and so are required to consider building materials with a low life cycle cost. Other sectors of the college, such as dining, make purchasing decisions based on LCCA for our

All new cleaning products are Green Seal or UL ECOLOGO certified and/or Safer Choice labeled (or local equivalents for institutions outside the U.S. and Canada). Our new head of custodial services has just negotiated a new contract with a Gorham, Maine based cleaning company which uses environmentally friendly cleaning products. More info on their products here - http://www.cleaneasier.com/sustainability

All our new buildings are built to LEED silver equivalent, and so are constrained by the LCCA materials, as well as demo procedures and runoff policy. We take into account factors such as: global warming potential of building operation, refrigerant ozone and GHG potential, acidification of land and water sources, water purity impact, and depletion of nonrenewable energy resources. We take into account the material life cycle costs - those embedded in the material, as well as the travel involved. See also OP-3, 4, &22. In addition, we only hire AIA 2030 architectural firms for our new buildings. From our Utility Management Plan: Sustainable Building Practices: All future construction, remodeling, renovation and repair projects will be designed with consideration of optimum energy utilization, low life cycle operating costs and compliance with all applicable energy codes and regulations. LEED guidelines are helpful in this regard. These considerations must be integral to the process of establishing the project budget. These sustainability elements must become part of the baseline budget – not alternates. Bates Energy Manager will participate in the budgeting and design processes to help inform the design team as to the energy efficiency impacts of choices being made and to help ensure choices are made based on life-cycle costs.

Bates has committed to EPEAT devices for the majority of our new devices.

Our Dining, Conferences, and Campus Events (DCCE) department is not outsourced to a third party vendor. Internally, our DCCE department favors local suppliers and organic farms for food sourcing if cost and reliability are not prohibitive. The Dining Commons commits to choose vendors that allow for responsible disposal of discarded resources. From the Sustainability Materials Flow/Dining website: "Bates’ Dining Services has become a model of environmental stewardship and has successfully created a system that conserves both water and energy and diverts a majority (over 80%) of its waste from the solid waste stream. Here are just some ways they do it: - develop close relationships with local vendors such as Stonyfield Farm who are organic and also collect and recycle containers - establish a pre-consumer food waste composting program with a farm in Lisbon, ME - establish a post-consumer food waste program with a pig farmer in Poland, MECommunity outreach program which allows extra food portions prepared to be shared with local homeless shelters and soup kitchens - buy local and organic products when possible including Oakhurst milk as well as fresh and local fish, meat and produce - 3 star certified as a green restaurant since 2002. Read on at the link below: https://www.bates.edu/news/2013/07/31/green-restaurant-association-three-star-sustainable-dining/ From the DCCE website (covid 2020 response): "We will continue to compost pre-consumer food waste (e.g., cold kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, egg shells, etc.) and divert cardboard/tin/glass/plastic/pre-consumer paper from the waste stream. The biggest change is that we will no longer be sending post-consumer food waste (i.e., unconsumed food) to the pig farmer. We will not be opening the dish room this fall and have moved to single-use serviceware. We chose a line of single-use products that are made from 100% recycled paperboard. While these products will not be diverted from the waste stream, we are doing our best to be good environmental stewards at the forefront. As you might imagine, this was a hard decision for us to make, considering that we have been a nationally recognized leader in sustainability since 2000, but weighed against the safety of our employees, there was no other choice." https://www.bates.edu/dining/

All new fuel purchases are evaluated on both cost as well as impact to our carbon emissions goal of carbon neutrality by 2020. We are committed to exploring the use of alternative, low-carbon fuels. We have recently switched to a biomass-based liquid fuel in our central steam plant. From our published Climate Action Plan - "In order to meet our carbon neutrality goals. . . we will replace the boilers at Bates’ main steam plant with a biomass cogeneration systm to provide steam heat, hot water and electricity once construction begins south of Campus Avenue, a move that requires greater capacity at the steam plant. Implementing this recommendation would reduce our net GHG emissions (after RECs) more than 80 percent and its completion will define our date for achieving climate neutrality.Our on-campus central plant and infrastructure provides steam for heating and domestic hot water needs to over 80 percent of the structures on-campus. Emissions from the physical plant represent 39 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions." "We have undertaken immediate actions to reduce our emissions including setting LEED Silver equivalent as a baseline for all new construction and purchasing almost 100% of our power from Maine renewable resources." For Transportation, also from our published Climate Action Plan: "Faculty and staff commuting comprises 4 percent of our GHG emissions, or 726 MTCDE. Mitigation strategies to be pursued include the following: • work with local and regional bus services to develop stops at Bates • create incentives for carpooling, vanpooling and local bus use • create a Web-based tool to facilitate carpooling • participate in Go Maine’s Commute Another Way to Work Week • reserve desirable parking spaces for hybrids, electric vehicles and/or carpools • encourage telecommuting and/or compressed work schedules where appropriate • minimize the number of new parking spaces anticipated with renovations and new construction under the Campus Facilities Master Plan • continue to encourage local living (rental properties available to faculty and staff) to encourage walking/bicycling to and from campus" We also have a stated goal of supporting the electrification of our vehicle fleet, as well as promoting electric vehicle use by offering an ever-increasing number of electric vehicle charging stations. We currently have 4 Level II charging stations and roughly five electric vehicles. Here's an excerpt from our Utility Management Plan - "1. Increase the use of alternative fuels and technology for College owned vehicles. Examples include electric vehicles and vehicles capable of using bio-gas. 2. Encourage van-pooling 3. Provide charging stations for electric vehicles."

We choose paper with recycled content, and purchase our wood fuel from a FSC certified vendor.