Office Depot Honors Fort Collins with Greener Purchasing Award

City’s Sustainability Efforts Honored by Office Depot, Transforming Local Government Conference

Office Depot has selected the City of Fort Collins as one of 30 customers out of 17,000 to receive the company’s 2013 Leadership in Greener Purchasing Award.

City leaders accepted the Office Depot award at a ceremony June 5 in Boca Raton, Fla. Fort Collins was the only recipient of the award for the Local Government Sector with 32 percent of the City’s purchases meeting Office Depot’s sustainability criteria.

Office Depot singled out customers who spent more on green products than their counterparts. They based the honor primarily on the percentage of 2012 expenditures on products with greener attributes including recycled; remanufactured; energy-efficient; non-toxic; and/or certified products such as Forest Stewardship Council, EPEAT, GREENGUARD, GreenSeal and EcoLogo.

The award is the second major national honor for the City in as many months. In April, the City received the Robert Havlick Award for Innovation in Local Government at the Transforming Local Government Conference for creating one of the nation’s first municipal sustainability services divisions.

“These awards illustrate the City’s strong commitment to sustainability and high-performing government,” said City Manager Darin Atteberry. “We are always working to gain efficiencies that not only improve our organization and cut costs, but also help the environment.

“We are honored by the Office Depot award,” Atteberry said. “Our Purchasing and Environmental Services departments have worked closely together to achieve great results for the City, which has increased our overall efficiency.”

The national award recognizes businesses that have a broad-based environmental purchasing program, meaning their high level of green spending occurs in more than one or two categories. The City of Fort Collins has included green purchasing as part of its sustainability program since 2004, but revised the goal in 2012 to evaluate and track products with greener attributes, such as recycled, remanufactured, energy-efficient or non-toxic. In 2012, the City contracted with the Green Purchasing Institute to review the City’s overall purchasing practices.

“Our winners are an elite group at the forefront of purchasing practice in the 21st century,” Yalmaz Siddiqui, Senior Director of Environmental Strategy for Office Depot, said in a statement. “We know that office products are an ‘indicator category’ since organizations with leading environmentally preferable purchasing programs often start by greening their paper, toner, technology and other workplace products. Our award winners have shown real effort to reduce their environmental footprints through sourcing – and often save money while doing so.”

In summer 2012, the City created a new division known as the Sustainability Services Area, combining resources around the triple bottom line of economic, environmental and social health for the community.

For that effort, earlier this spring, the City was one of two municipalities nationally to receive a Transforming Local Government award – with Fort Collins receiving the Robert Havlick Award for Innovation in Local Government. Only two Cities received a major award from the conference from more than 80 submissions. The awards are presented annually to further encourage innovation and recognize excelling in local government.

Transforming Local Government is the “premier thinking conference for local government.” Transforming Local Government 2014, to be in Denver April 23-25, will be co-hosted by cities along the Front Range including the City of Fort Collins and the Colorado Municipal League, among others.

For more information about Office Depot's environmental initiatives, go to officedepotcitizenship.com/planetLanding.html. For more information about the City of Fort Collins’s Sustainability Services Area, go to fcgov.com/sustainability.