Thanks to the internet and social media, local governments can now rapidly share innovative ideas and best business practices to improve environmental performance. We at Alameda County like to think of this as open source sustainability, where local governments make their resources available publicly so other agencies can learn from and build on them. If we apply this concept to purchasing, the enormous collective buying power of government can – and will – influence markets to address environmental and social challenges and improve the sustainability of the global supply chain. This is already happening with private sector companies who are collaborating with competitors to tackle complex issues like sustainable procurement. Now is the time for government collaboration to drive sustainable innovations for the benefit of all.

You may be wondering how it’s possible to start sharing resources in these fiscally challenging times when staff resources are stretched thin. We believe that open source sustainability is not an extra; it is an essential tool that lowers operational costs and drives efficient decision making across governments. For example, your organization may openly share an executive summary highlighting the costs and benefits of electric vehicle charging stations for local government fleets. Thanks to your sharing this research, we can build on your experience, saving our agency time and money. In turn, we can share specific environmental language from our bids and our contract pricing so your agency knows it is getting a good deal on environmentally preferable products. As a result, we all reduce staff time spent on research, lower costs, collaboratively recognize what works, and, ultimately, supply better service to our customers and taxpayers.

For our part, Alameda County is joining other leading public agencies in promoting open source sustainability by making our green purchasing resources available on our website, acsustain.org. We have been greening County contracts to include specific sustainability language that has a positive influence on environmental health, public health, and greenhouse gas emissions. By proactively sharing our procurement information online, other agencies can borrow exact language from our bids or potentially piggyback on our contracts. This real-time sharing of information will build on the foundation of knowledge available from the Responsible Purchasing Network, StopWaste.Org, and other organizations who are working to green government purchasing.

Now, step back for a moment and picture the purchasing power of the nearly 40,000 municipal governments across the United States. If we consider that the U.S. EPA recently estimated that 42% of greenhouse gas emissions nationwide occur throughout the procurement lifecycle (resource extraction through product disposal), we see that, together, we have an extraordinary opportunity. We have the ability to shift industry practices towards more sustainable production and distribution processes, if we coordinate and ask for greener products.

Through social and professional networks like ICMA, we can easily share innovative operational strategies, inspiring success stories, and technical research. In turn, we can save money, reduce staff research time, and have enormous influence in driving markets to become more sustainable. Thanks to this digital era, the ball is in our court, and through our collaboration, the open source sustainability movement can thrive.