Abstract
In 2011, the General Services Administration did the first exploration on behalf of the federal government to find the environmental impacts associated with products and services it procured. The agency used an Environmentally Extended Input-Output Life Cycle Assessment and other methods to rank industry sectors based on measures of environmental impact and purchase volume. This project replicated and refined the GSA’s approach by creating a roadmap for the Environmental Protection Agency to prioritize its purchases so that it reduces its overall environmental profile. This process laid out a series of questions: What EPA purchases generate the greatest overall environmental impacts? What are their significant impacts? What are the best products/services to target? What are the sources of the impacts? What opportunities exist to reduce these impacts? After creating specific criteria and rank ordering the purchases based on aggregate environmental impact, the data shows that the sectors Waste Management & Remediation Services and Scientific Research & Development Services are the most impactful. These two sectors along with other crucial data has been given to the EPA so they can provide funding and guidance to identify the sources of the impacts and the opportunities to reduce those impacts.