Selected Examples of United States Efforts To Promote Sustainable Consumption and Production:
Sustainable Consumption and Production Strategies

Sector Strategies Program seeks industry-wide environmental gains through innovative actions taken with a number of manufacturing and service sectors. Launched in June 2003, the program works with select trade associations, EPA programs and regions, states, and other groups to find sensible solutions to sector-specific problems. The program focuses on three priority areas: promoting environmental management systems, overcoming regulatory or other barriers to performance improvement, and measuring and reporting industry-wide environmental and economic progress.

Compliance Assistance Centers assist businesses, local governments, and federal facilities to understand federal environmental requirements and save money through pollution prevention techniques. Sponsored by EPA, the Centers consist of partnerships with industry, academic institutions, environmental groups, and other agencies. Through websites, telephone assistance lines, fax-back systems, and e-mail discussion groups, each Center provides comprehensive, easy-to-understand compliance information targeted to specific industry sectors. In 2001, the Centers had more than 501,000 visitors and some 1.5 million requests for web pages and compliance assistance documents. Currently, the Centers are visited over 1,467 times a day by businesses, farms, government, the public, and other assistance providers. A 2001 survey of regulated entities indicated that about ? of them had taken action as a result of Center use, ranging from contacting a regulatory agency, changing a process or practice, to conducting a self audit.

The Office of the Federal Environmental Executive at EPA promotes sustainable environmental stewardship throughout the federal government. To initiate momentum for adoption of sustainability practices and policies, the Office encourages sustainable practices; identifies and shares success stories, best practices, and other tools to make sustainable practices easier to adopt and maintain; provides training, awareness, and outreach; assists in coordinating and advancing sustainability policies across agencies; publicly advocates and supports sustainable practices and policies; and measures and reports on agencies' progress. The Office focuses its activities on six action areas: environmental management systems (EMS), waste prevention and recycling, green purchasing, electronics stewardship, sustainable buildings, and industrial ecology.

It All Adds Up to Cleaner Air is a public education and partnership-building initiative developed collaboratively by several federal agencies to help regional, state and community efforts to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution. It All Adds Up seeks to inform the public about the connection between their transportation choices, traffic congestion and air pollution, and emphasizes simple, convenient actions people can take to improve air quality and reduce congestion. During the first five years of the initiative, more than one dozen communities implemented the initiative locally and more than 60 others requested materials and information from the federal partner agencies for use in their regions. The voluntary initiative is sponsored by DOT and EPA. 

The Transportation and Community and System Preservation Pilot Program is a transportation grant program to help States, local governments, and metropolitan planning organizations plan and implement strategies that improve the efficiency of the transportation system; reduce environmental impacts of transportation; reduce the need for future infrastructure investments; ensure efficient access to jobs and services; and examine private sector development patterns and investments that support these goals. 

The National Partnership for Environmental Priorities (NPEP) program encourages companies to make innovative changes in their manufacturing and production processes to reduce the use of priority chemicals <http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/hazwaste/minimize/chemlist.htm>. Charter members have identified priority chemicals they want to reduce and signed on to the program. (April 2004) 

The GreenScapes Alliance is designed to help preserve natural resources and prevent waste and pollution by encouraging companies, government agencies, and other entities to make more holistic decisions regarding waste generation and disposal and the use of the land, water, pesticides, and energy. By focusing on the "4 Rs"?reduce, reuse, recycle, and rebuy?this program can help improve both an organization's bottom-line and the environment. GreenScapes will promote practices and products that still meet users needs but have better environmental profiles than current methods.

Environmentally Preferable Purchasing. "Environmentally Preferable" refers to products or services that have a lesser or reduced effect on human health and the environment when compared with competing products or services that serve the same purpose. The EPP Program works to leverage the U.S. government?s purchasing power to minimize environmental burdens by encouraging and assisting federal agencies in the purchasing of environmentally preferable products and services. <http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/epp/about/about.htm>

The Green Suppliers Network. (GSN) is a collaborative venture between industry, the EPA and the 360vu, a leading provider of assistance to US manufacturers through its national network of Manufacturing Extension Partnerships (MEP), works with all levels of the manufacturing supply chain to achieve environmental and economic benefits.

Sustainable Futures is a pilot project launched in 2002 to encourage companies to apply pollution prevention principles during the development of new chemicals and to develop inherently low hazard new chemicals.

Best Practices works with industry to identify plant-wide opportunities for energy savings and process efficiency. Through the implementation of new technologies and systems improvements, companies across the United States are achieving immediate savings results. Most companies have saved a minimum of $1 million annually from just one plant-wide assessment, with an average payback of less than 18 months.

The Pollution Prevention Resource Exchange (P2Rx) is a consortium of eight regional pollution prevention information centers, funded in part through grants from EPA. The centers lay the groundwork for a seamless national network of easy-to-access, high quality pollution prevention information that promotes waste reduction throughout the country. The centers provide pollution prevention information, networking opportunities and other services to States, local governments and technical assistance providers in their region. The centers represent a broad constituency, including state and local pollution prevention programs, manufacturing extension partnerships, cooperative extension and nonprofit organizations. Since 1993 in the Pacific Northwest region alone, such efforts have saved more than 1 billion gallons of water, eliminated 840 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, reduced solid waste by about 242 million pounds, saved about 636 million KWh of electricity, avoided 15.3 million vehicle miles of travel, and reduced operating costs by more than $243 million.

Design for the Environment has worked with more than 15 industrial sectors to empower industry to incorporate environmental considerations, along with performance and cost considerations, into the design and redesign of their products, processes, and technical and management systems since 1992. This program has had a significant impact on the drycleaning industry, for example, leading to greater use of environmentally preferable cleaning technologies and a 68% reduction in the use of perchloroethylene, or "perc," a chemical solvent. 

The Environmental Technology Verification (ETV) Program at EPA develops testing protocols and verifies the performance of innovative technologies that have the potential to improve protection of human health and the environment. Since 1995 ETV has verified 208 private sector environmental technologies and developed 73 testing protocols in such areas as drinking water systems for small communities, air pollution control technologies that reduce smog causing nitrogen oxide and lower greenhouse gases, new technologies that lower emissions and costs for metal finishing shops and industrial coatings operations, and innovative monitoring technologies of all types. An additional 108 technologies are in testing or evaluation and 127 applications are pending.

Environmental Management Systems (EMS) enables companies and organizations to systematically manage their environmental and health safety matters. EMS can result in both business and environmental benefits. EPA provides resources and information to the private sector, as well as to other Federal agencies, to promote the use of EMS.

The National Environmental Performance Track recognizes and encourages top environmental performers -- those who go beyond compliance with regulatory requirements -- to attain levels of environmental performance and management that benefit people, communities, and the environment. In 2001, Performance Track?s business participants reduced their energy use by 6 percent, reduced water use by 5 percent, reduced their solid waste generation and use of hazardous materials by 11 percent, and increased their use of recycled or reused materials by 81 percent.

Product Stewardship Partnerships involve efforts to reduce the life-cycle impacts of products, through voluntary product stewardship partnerships with manufacturers, retailers, other governments and non-government organizations. An example of this is Carpet America <http://www.carpetrecovery.org/>, an industry-led, multi-stakeholder organization that seeks to divert 40% of carpet from landfills by 2012 through recycling, reuse, and other waste recovery and waste minimization activities.

The Sector Strategies Program seeks industry-wide environmental gains through innovative actions taken with a number of manufacturing and service sectors. Launched in June 2003, the program works with select trade associations, EPA programs and regions, states, and other groups to find sensible solutions to sector-specific problems. The program focuses on three priority areas: promoting environmental management systems, overcoming regulatory or other barriers to performance improvement, and measuring and reporting industry-wide environmental and economic progress.

The Networked Environmental Information System for Global Emissions Inventories (NEISGEI) is an effort to develop: 1) a globally distributed database of air pollutant emissions information in well documented formats at the local, regional, national, and global scales; 2) computer software that will enable users to retrieve, compile, and analyze relevant emissions information from the globally distributed database using the World Wide Web; and 3) a global network of air emissions experts in government, industry, and academia.

Climate Leaders encourages companies to develop long-term comprehensive climate change strategies. Established in 2002, Climate Leaders challenges companies to inventory their greenhouse gas emissions, set aggressive long-term reduction goals, and report on their annual progress. Through commitments announced to date, partners in Climate Leaders will prevent a total of 125 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions -- equivalent to the emissions from about 3 million automobiles in a year. Forty companies are currently partners in the Climate Leaders program. 

The State Energy Program (SEP) provides funding to states to design and carry out their own energy efficiency and renewable energy programs. In the 20-plus years since its inception, SEP has: modernized more than 69,000 buildings -- including schools, hospitals, and government office buildings -- to make them more energy efficient; carried out more than 8,000 energy projects in the states; supported 6,300 jobs annually in the energy efficiency and renewable energy industries; leveraged $4 of investment in energy projects for every $1 of DOE funding; and created community-business partnerships in thousands of local communities. <http://www.eere.energy.gov/buildings/state_energy/>