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Student capstone and applied projects from ASU's School of Sustainability.

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Elements of Sustainable Purchasing Policy That Relate to Implementation Success

Description
Sustainable purchasing has become and increasingly salient way by which local governments can decrease their resource consumptions, while also addressing broader climate action goals. Successfully implemented sustainable purchasing policies have the potential to reduce consumption and waste, expand green purchasing markets, and catalyze spillover benefits such as financial savings. Furthermore,…

Sustainable purchasing has become and increasingly salient way by which local governments can decrease their resource consumptions, while also addressing broader climate action goals. Successfully implemented sustainable purchasing policies have the potential to reduce consumption and waste, expand green purchasing markets, and catalyze spillover benefits such as financial savings. Furthermore, city-level actions have become increasingly significant as the federal government ceases critical climate research and pulls out of collaborative climate deals (i.e. The Paris Climate Accord). Using data from the Sustainable Purchasing Researching Initiative at Arizona State University’s Center for Organization Research and Design, as well as qualitative policy analyses, the author investigates the elements of a city’s sustainable purchasing policy (SPP) that are related to its implementation success. Furthermore, the author compares these initial findings to the case study of Phoenix, AZ where she explores whether these elements are also present in the City of Phoenix’s sustainable purchasing policy. The author finds that six key policy elements are generally associated with higher SPP implementation success rates — mandatory requirements, accountability, multi-level governance, vendors requirements, advocacy, and continual improvement. While additional policy elements undoubtedly play a role in the successful implementation of a SPP, the author concludes cities that incorporate these specific elements are better positioned for successful and sustainable implementation. Conclusions further show that the City of Phoenix’s 2007 EPP contained only two of these policy elements. As a result of this project and the author’s work with the City, the 2017 revised SPP incorporates all six policy elements.
ContributorsBurwell, Caitlin (Author) / Darnall, Nicole (Contributor) / Schoon, Michael (Contributor)
Created2017-12-01

Externalities: Revealing Hidden Natural Costs Through Labeling Legislation

Description

The planet is going through a mass extinction event brought on by human influence: biodiversity elimination, habitat destruction, climate change, and many other cascading effects. The toll on nature is already unconscionable, yet this is already effecting human populations as well, and will only exponentially increase in the coming years.…

The planet is going through a mass extinction event brought on by human influence: biodiversity elimination, habitat destruction, climate change, and many other cascading effects. The toll on nature is already unconscionable, yet this is already effecting human populations as well, and will only exponentially increase in the coming years. It won’t just be our children experiencing this crisis, it is us, now. It is already happening. Arguably a primary reason for these environmental issues falls to environmental externalities in our economic systems.

The only way to fundamentally address this is through a systemic introduction of labeling or reporting the environmental costs of products and services. Externalities are the hidden costs, or the costs not calculated in the production or use of a good or service. Through a lack of transparency, intentional obfuscation, and willful or pure ignorance, we as a species profoundly lack knowledge on how the products and services we consume affect the world around us. In fact, of 1000 global primary production sectors, none generate the profit needed to cover their cost in natural capital (TruCost, 2013).

The only way we can even have a chance to mitigate our impact is to be provided that data before we spend our money. As such, products and services must report their impacts on the environment through a standardized metric or grade on a label or report that is easy to understand and will capture information on biodiversity loss, climate change, pollution and waste. The only way for this to effectively take hold and maintain transparency is through governmental legislation and the associated infrastructure to provide a method for businesses to make such a calculation.

This paper describes the effort to design such policy, provide it to legislators and pass it. Most ideally, this would be integrated into a larger systemic bill designed to economically shape the country in a sustainable way. As such, this initiative is being proposed as an amendment to be added to House Resolution 109, the “Green New Deal.” Assimilating this as a specific initiative within the GND, which is currently more or less a framework of mission statements, provides a more solid groundwork for a successful legislative effort. The underlying concept is to enable the consumer with needed and usable information. There is no true guarantee of a “happy ending,” but at its core, it will help to hold businesses accountable and ultimately empower the common consumer to make informed choices, from whence the fate of our planet can at least be decided honestly.
ContributorsArmbrust, Bryan (Writer of accompanying material)
Created2020-05-15