Pollution Prevention Software

AN INTELLIGENT POLLUTION PREVENTION SYSTEM: STEERING PROCUREMENT TOWARDS THE "GREENEST PRODUCT"

GA has developed and is implementing an intelligent pollution prevention system, ProcureSmart, at the Ogden Air Logistics Center. Our approach has been to reduce the amount of pollution-causing products used on base by addressing the procurement of hazardous materials at the start of its life cycle–when it is requested by a user for procurement.

Presently, users of hazardous materials at Department of Defense (DOD) facilities request a hazardous material by citing its need and stating the product's National Stock Number (NSN) or MIL Standard identifier. The product is then procured through normal means through GSA schedules or, in cases of rush orders, through local procurement procedures. Interestingly, the hazardous material is purchased based on competitive procurement regulations with no consideration of waste minimization. For example, a degreasing solvent that would be procured is identified by its NSN. For any given NSN there exists a list of qualified products from various vendors which are acceptable for procurement. These qualified products often have different chemical constituents. Some may contain large quantities of ozone-depleting chemicals while others may be relatively environmentally innocuous. No pollution prevention tools are available to the requester of the hazardous material or to the procuring organization to identify the best choice for that site and to steer the procurement towards the "greener" product.

Many DOD facilities are being cited by the Inspector General's office and by the EPA for not making any attempt at pollution prevention. The GA system provides an easy, low cost way to genuinely reduce the hazards being procured by a facility and meet the growing mandates for proactive pollution prevention.

The GA intelligent system provides hazardous material requesters and procuring organizations with an easy, PC-based system to identify the "greenest" option and document why it was selected. Should the requester eventually reject the "greenest" and/or all of the choices made by our system, the organization can capture the logic of why the greener product was rejected and can document that a pollution prevention attempt was made. This is the essence of the legislative and EPA requirement for pollution prevention–that an effort be made. The GA system operates as a Windows-based application with a typical graphical user interface and easy pull-down menus. The PC system has a large hard drive which stores a large database of NSNs, associated NSNs, qualified products, product constituents from Material Safety Data Sheets, and environmental parameters to assist the user with identifying the "greenest" product. A CD-ROM update to the database is required quarterly to ensure that the data are the most current available.

The rules for ranking the pollution level of the product would be tailored for each facility; however, in general it will contain a consideration of:

Ozone-depleting Chemicals or Substances
EPA 33/50 Program
Toxic Release Inventory Targeted Chemicals
Inventory or Reporting Limited Chemicals
Local Targeted Air Emission Chemicals
Title V/NESHAPS- Hazardous Air Pollutants
Local Targeted Wastewater Discharges
Local Targeted Stormwater Discharges
Local Soil/Groundwater Problem Chemicals
Flammability
Water Reactivity
pH
Carcinogens

By addressing the hazards of a substance at the very start of its procurement (i.e., at the time it is requested), a facility is able to consistently implement pollution prevention measures by choosing the product that will release the least amount of pollution into the environment.

For information contact:
Anthony.Gattuso@gat.com