Green Products Initiative: Office Supplies Program

About the Program

Category: County Resiliency (Best in Category)

Year: 2009

Hennepin County, in collaboration with Office Depot, set up a comprehensive program to increase the purchasing of green office supplies, known as the Green Products Initiative: Office Supplies Program. The concept was to make purchasing green office supplies easy, seamless, and automatic. Through this new program, when county employees order non-green supplies, they will be automatically replaced with a greener product if a comparable product is available from Office Depot’s Green Book. By purchasing green products, the county will have less of an impact on the environment and save money. Environmentally preferable products contain recycled content or are made with less toxic materials, and based on extensive examination by Hennepin County and Office Depot, this program will save the county more than $100,000 annually. The County’s Environmental Services Department partnered with the Purchasing and Contract Services Department to assure a smooth transition to the new ordering system with Office Depot and communicate useful, beneficial information to county office supply ordering staff, other county employees, and external stakeholders.