Leeds Metropolitan University (LMU) along with the majority of the UK higher education sector procures a considerable amount of goods and services annually; in the case of LMU somewhere in the region of £30 million a year is spent.  These activities can have an impact not only on financial resources but also on the environment as procurement spans across all functions and facilities, including energy consumption, waste production & costs and transport related emissions.

In order to respond to these impacts, the purchasing and environment office at LMU developed an environmental purchasing policy, several years ago, which has driven a number of ‘greener’ contracts. One of these is the contract to print the university’s prospectus. The tendering process for this highlighted the environmental and economic benefits of reducing the weight of paper and changing the production process from sheet-fed to web-fed. These were found to be capable of producing a similar level of environmental improvement to shifting to recycled paper, which had raised some quality concerns.

The shift to web-based printing has already produced a 13% reduction in cost, and reduced consumption by energy. A planned 10% reduction in paper weight for the 2004 prospectus is also expected to cut printing costs by £2,500 (with additional savings from reduced postage costs) and reduce paper use by 5 tonnes per annum.

The case shows that: