ABSTRACTINTRODUCTIONA History of Green PurchasingThe questionability of consumerism as a form of political participation highlights the contradictory construction of green consumption that Smith should be aware of in its pursuit of a green purchasing policy. Consumption itself is a use of resources and Smith should be wary of succumbing to a “green-washed” image of sustainability that only commodifies sustainability as a catch-all phrase and does little to nothing to affect Smith’s environmental footprint (Anderson, 292). The following quote from scholar, Robert D. Sack, illustrates the pacifying capabilities of using consumption as a form of political action.Consumption is more of a hybrid language than most. It borrows material and forms of expressions from anywhere and everywhere, but its primary rhetorical device is indirection. We have said products promise to create contexts, to link individuals to groups, and to communicate meanings (Sack 658).METHODOLOGYRESULTSCONCLUSIONEffective green purchasing means identifying the impact Smith has on the environment. Effective green purchasing will equip Smith to be the “private institution with a public conscious.” Smith is a large consumer of goods. As an elite private institution, Smith serves as a model to its peer institutions. To be a private college with a public conscience, we must examine the environmental costs of the production, transportation, use, and disposal of materials used to operate this campus. It is important for Smith to incorporate this information into a broader understanding of its global impact.By better understanding the ways in which Smith institutionally and economically affects the larger world, we can better monitor and conserve these consumed resources. Without a baseline study of resource use as it pertains to purchasing, there are no avenues through which to reduce use of said resources. Purchasing provides the Smith community with a forum to reconcile the sometimes competing social, economic, and environmental tenets of sustainability. Creating a functional green purchasing policy requires prioritizing and making institutional choices regarding the paradoxes resulting from merging the three aspects of sustainability.LITERATURE CITEDPrice, Jennifer. Flight Maps: Adventures with Nature in Modern America. New York:Basic Books, 1999.FurnitureSustainable Office Product Alternatives Study for the Science CenterThe (Im)Possibility of Green Purchasing on the Smith Campus:Limiting Consumption, Considering Means of Production, and Understanding Smith’sInstitutional Environmental ImpactMandi Norton-WestbrookEVS 300 Final ProjectSmith CollegeMay 10, 20071ABSTRACTThis paper considers the potential adoption of a green purchasing policy for the Smith campus. Specifically, it looks at the work of the Committee on Sustainability (COS) and its proposed policy from Spring 2007. My research consists of quantitative and qualitative research, including a quantitative study of green alternative office products forthe Science Center, interviews and meetings with a variety of community members, research about other green purchasing policies, and my own participation on the COS subcommittee on green purchasing. Drawing on these sources, my research reveals several considerations for the adoption of a green purchasing policy: a decentralized system of purchasing, the need for administrative support, product consistency and quality, the development of a sustainability criteria, infrastructural reinforcement, and cost. These considerations were used to construct a plan of action as to how the college can purchase in a more sustainable fashion. The college will need to conduct a baseline study of its purchasing in different departments, run campaigns that alert the community to our purchasing decisions and environmental impacts, and critically think about means of reducing our consumption. The first step to such a plan would be the implementation ofthe work-study program suggested by the COS to the administration.INTRODUCTIONA History of Green PurchasingGreen purchasing arose within the environmental movement as a means of converting consumption into a location of political potential and action. Green purchasingborrows language and a conceptualization of consumption and environmental degradationfrom two different sectors of the environmental movement: environmental preferential purchasing (EPP) and green consumerism. In order to understand the way in which green purchasing has entered the political conversation on the Smith campus, I will outline a brief history of the EPP and green consumer movements.EPP standards emerged during the 1990s as different governmental entities came to 2examine their purchasing decisions’ environmental impacts. On a federal level, environmental-preferential purchasing grew out the October 20, 1993 Executive Order 12873, “Federal Acquisition, Recycling, and Waste Prevention,” and September 14, 1998 Executive Order 13101, “Greening the Government Through Waste Prevention, Recycling, and Federal Acquisition” (EPA, 12). EPP guidelines are an expansion of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Comprehensive Procurement Guidelines (CPG) program for the federal government’s “buy-recycled” program. EPP guidelines are defined in the following way by the EPA: “EPP means selecting ‘products or services thathave a lesser or reduced effect on human health and the environment when compared withcompeting products or services that serve the same purpose.’” (EPA, 12). The EPA generated EPP standards as a guide to how government institutions can make economically-sensical and environmentally-aware decisions. To date, EPP standards have been adopted by many different municipalities and serve as models to understand how Smith can decrease its environmental impact via purchasing decisions. Furthermore, EPP standards have created an infrastructure, such as vendor fairs, contracts, and industry standards, which Smith could potentially utilize. Parallel to this change in governmental purchasing procedures, the green consumer movement began. The green consumer movement stresses the power individuals have in their individual consumer choices. Historically, green consumerism attracts an upper middle class with a disposable income (Gardyn, 31). The ease and 3corresponding dependence on a hegemonic culture of consumerism serve as points of both attraction to and criticism of