Sustainable Ithaca

Credit to Tim Ashmore in The Ithaca Journal:

ITHACA — Six Tompkins County institutions and agencies have banded together to create New York’s first “green” consortium to help negotiate pricing for environmentally friendly products. Cornell, Ithaca College, Tompkins Cortland Community College, Tompkins County, the City of Ithaca, the Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce and Tompkins-Seneca-Tioga Board of Cooperative Educational Services make up the Finger Lakes Environmentally Preferred Procurement Consortium.

“Ithaca is often touted as one of the ‘greenest’ cities in the country,” said Jean McPheeters, president of the Chamber of Commerce, said. “The formation of this consortium demonstrates the commitment of our area business community to work together with our educational partners to advance regional sustainability.”

County Finance Director David Squires said there was a common interest within the county to invest more in environmentally friendly products, and the Tompkins County Division of Solid Waste took the lead and quickly found that Cornell University and Ithaca College had a similar focus.

“This purchasing consortium is a great example of local governments working collectively with the educational institutions and local municipalities,” said Cheryl Nelson, chairwoman of the Tompkins County sustainability team. “It is a perfect match for the county as it coincides with our own team’s goals of promoting sustainability within the county.”

Edmund Wilson, manager of procurement services at Cornell, said the consortium will buy environmentally friendly cleaning products, paper and office supplies.

Cornell has the most purchasing power as the largest entity of the consortium, and there’s a value to manufacturers working with an institution of that size.

“When you’re talking about environmental sustainability, it’s not about one organization, it’s about this community,” Wilson said. “Now everybody can get these products.”

Wilson estimates green products cost 20-40 percent more than conventional products.

Kat McCarthy, coordinator of the consortium, said the first step to reducing the cost of environmentally preferred products is getting them into the community.

By purchasing green products, particularly ones with recycled content, it closes a gap in the loop commodities go through because it creates a market for recycled products, McCarthy said.

“Through diligent recycling efforts, our community has reduced the amount of solid waste that we generate by almost 60 percent,” said Barbara Eckstrom, Tompkins County Solid Waste manager. “As one of our waste reduction strategies, along with the traditional three R’s (reduce, reuse and recycle), we have introduced a fourth R — re-buy — encouraging the purchase of products that have environmentally preferable attributes. Specifying recycled content in products increased manufacturing demand for recycled products and stimulates the use of a wide variety of recovered materials.”

McCarthy noted that Ithaca College’s snack bar has implemented green purchasing by buying compostable, disposable products. Instead of petroleum-based plastic cutlery, forks and spoons are made of biodegradable materials.

In a display of varying levels of recycled paper, McCarthy showed three sheets of white, recycled paper, none of which was obviously different from the next. One sheet was 100 percent recycled paper, one 50 percent and another 35 percent.

She said old-style recycled paper was obviously different.

“You could definitely tell it was recycled content, and it didn’t work as well,” McCarthy said. “We’re trying these out, we’ve done comparisons, and people can’t even pick out which ones (are) the recycled compared to the virgin paper.”

The consortium will be able to use Cornell’s connections to manufacturers to bypass working with sales representatives, Squires said. He said Cornell “generously brought (the county) into negotiations with the vendors.”

Wilson said the goal of the consortium is to buy sustainable on all levels, which means more than buying environmentally preferable products or recycled products. It means trying to buy local products, or to attract vendors to Tompkins County to build infrastructure here.