The Manhattan SWAB, and its Waste Prevention Committee which co-authored Intro. 482 by combining environmental procurement provisions with the 1996 Mayoral Directive on Waste Prevention in City Agencies, enthusiastically endorse Intro. 482, its goals, and measures designed to move the City government towards instituting more environmentally sound procurement practices and waste prevention practices in the agencies.

I'll outline these reasons for that support:

1. Waste Prevention is the most cost-effective way of dealing with solid waste, because collection, processing and disposal costs are reduced or avoided altogether, in the first year of investment, and usually well into future years with little continuing investment.
2. Waste Prevention is by far the most environmentally benign way of dealing with solid waste
3. Waste Prevention, like recycling, can expand economic development, creating new companies, jobs and expanding tax revenue in industries that design and manufacture durable, recycled content, recyclable, less toxic and less packaged goods, and in other industries that repair, refurbish, restore, and otherwise extend the useful life of durable goods.

In spite of these facts, the City has never prioritized investments in waste prevention, preferring to sink hundreds of millions of dollars per year into collecting, processing, disposing, and now exporting millions of tons per year, much of which consists useful resources that could have been retained in the City. In stark contrast, the City spends a small fraction of 1% of its Sanitation expense budget ($1-2 million) on waste prevention staff and programs. The City is literally throwing away tons of resources, thousands of jobs, and considerable tax revenues.

Intro 482 is an important first step to invest in redirecting the City away from exporting 80% of what it calls "waste", which is chock full of usable resources, or products that never should have been consumed in the first place, towards improved resource utilization via environmental purchasing. The City can choose to buy less wasteful products and packaging, and choose to repair and judicious use of products the City does purchase, or it can export a needlessly large quantity of waste.

Reduction in the generation of waste can be accomplished by changes in

1. the design and manufacturing of products and packaging,
2. purchasing habits of consumers, in this case governmental agencies, and
3. the attention given by City agencies to maintaining and extending the useful life of products already purchased

Intro 482 addresses all three areas by changing specifications to encourage purchase of less packaging, purchase of durables in place of disposables, changing office practices to conserve nondurables (e.g., consumable office supplies), and better conservation of durables (e.g., via repair, better warehouse management).

Intro 482 also has a positive effect on recycling economics in NYC. By requiring more purchases of products made from recycled materials, the City will serve as a powerful market for recyclable materials that the City collects. By buying a larger proportion of product in bulk, or otherwise using less packaging, the City saves in disposal costs. If the City replaces nondurable products with more durable ones, not only is less waste generated, but there are savings in procurement costs, since the durable products last a long time. If the City chooses to repair and refurbish rather than discard, waste generation is reduced.

In order for the City to move towards achievement of the goals of this legislation, it is important to require that the agencies delineate plans for developing and implementing specific, new waste prevention practices and procurement changes in an organized way. To assess the degree to which these goals have actually been achieved and the rate at which the agencies have achieved (or not achieved) them, it is important to delineate reporting requirements clearly. Reports can point out areas where there is a need for improvement; plans keep the City on track to bigger and better improvements in the future.

New York City can learn from other government agencies. We need to look no farther than the MTA, which just two days ago announced that it would modify its procurement practices such that 50% of its new bus fleet every year would consist of natural gas-burning vehicles to reduce air pollution. Though Intro 509 of 1995 proposed set-asides (specified purchasing percentages and timelines) such as this for City environmental purchasing, Intro 482 is more conservative in its approach. If a more bold approach is desired, the Council may want to evaluate resurrecting provisions from Intro. 509.

The Federal Government's procurement agency, GSA, has implemented "Planet GSA", a program to buy green, build green, drive green, and save green. The "buy green" program addresses environmental procurement. King County, (Seattle) Washington also has a large environmental procurement establishment.

In addition to legislation to improve environmental procurement and wastes prevention in City agencies, there are a myriad of strategies -- educational programs, information exchanges, other legislative initiatives and economic incentives that can be employed to motivate these changes by designers, manufacturers, and consumers. The MCSWAB hopes that more of these will be actively pursued soon, not only by City agencies, but also addressing the much larger residential waste stream, to reduce the extent to which the City exports, reduce environmental impacts, and save the City money.