About the Environmentally Preferable Purchasing Program
The Environmentally Preferable Purchasing (EPP) program harnesses the power of the over 650 billion dollar federal pocketbook to catalyze a more sustainable marketplace for all – reducing climate impacts, improving the health of frontline communities, preventing pollution, and increasing U.S. industry competitiveness. The program helps U.S. federal government purchasers utilize private sector standards and ecolabels to identify and procure environmentally preferable products and services, providing a convenient and streamlined way to make sense of the often complex sustainable products marketplace.
The program does this is by:
- Coordinating U.S. government technical input into the development of voluntary consensus product sustainability standards,
- Issuing Recommendations of Specifications, Standards, and Ecolabels for Federal Purchasing across several key purchase categories, and
- Helping federal agencies procure products meeting the recommended specifications, standards, and ecolabels.
The EPP Program’s work has generated significant cost and environmental benefits to the federal government. In 2020 alone, the federal government purchased more than 27.4 million EPEAT-registered products, resulting in a cost savings to the federal government of around $1 billion.
Federal purchasers leading by example influence what is available for other purchasers to buy as well. According to the Global Electronics Council (GEC), over their lifetime, compared to products that do not meet EPEAT criteria, the more than 355 million EPEAT-registered IT products purchased worldwide in 2020 will result in:
- Reduction of 23.6 million metric tons of greenhouse gasses, equivalent to taking over 5 million average U.S. passenger cars off the road for a year.
- Reduction of over 1.7 million metric tons of non-hazardous waste, equivalent to the annual waste generation of over 932,000 U.S. households.
- Reduction of over 13,000 million metric tons of toxic substances, equivalent to the weight of 5.8 million bricks.