Environmentally Preferable Purchasing (EPP) means considering multiple environmental attributes of products and services before buying. It’s a market-based approach to making environmental improvement and protecting human health through our purchases, without sacrificing price or performance. EPP also means not purchasing—or reducing the purchase of—certain products or services that may have detrimental environmental or public health effects. 

 

The Federal Government (in Executive Order 13423) defines the purchase of environmentally preferable products as “…products or services that have lesser or reduced effect on human health and the environment when compared with competing products or services that serve the same purpose. This comparison may consider raw materials acquisition, production, manufacturing, packaging, distribution, reuse, operation, maintenance, or disposal of the product or service.”