Ball State has been long committed to fostering an environmentally sound campus, including establishing and adhering to guidelines for green purchasing.

Green Purchasing is a way of adding environmental considerations to the price and performance criteria that businesses use to make purchasing decisions. Green purchasing is a consideration of supply chain management and is also known as environmentally preferred purchasing (EPP), green procurement, affirmative procurement, eco-procurement, and environmentally responsible purchasing. Green purchasing attempts to identify and reduce environmental impact and to maximize resource efficiency.

The following principles are common to green purchasing efforts:

Pollution Prevention

• Avoiding the creation of wastes from the start of a process.
• Reducing or eliminating toxicity, air and water emissions.
• Preventing transfer of pollution from one environmental medium (air, water, or land) to another.
• Includes "source reduction," and "waste reduction," which prevent the creation of wastes rather than manage them after they are created. (P2 Definition)
  

Life-Cycle Perspective

• Looking at costs beyond the purchase price.
• Considering costs and environmental impacts over the lifetime of a product or service (raw material extraction, manufacturing, packaging, transport, energy consumption, maintenance, disposal).
  

Resource Efficiency

• Giving preference to reusable content, and recycled materials over virgin materials, as well as to conserving water and energy.
  

Source: The Pollution Prevention Resource Exchange is a national network of regional centers dedicated to improving the dissemination of pollution prevention information in the service provider community.