Buying environmentally superior goods and services can be beneficial for an FHEI even when they are more expensive than alternatives because a strong sustainable procurement policy can make a difference to reputation. Research in business as a whole shows that this can make a positive difference to sales (i.e. student recruitment in the case of FHEIs), recruitment of new staff and goodwill with key stakeholders.

Some FHEIs have chosen to do this in a few areas, such as buying green electricity. Generally speaking, however, the financial position of further and higher education means that sustainable procurement has to be justified by more utilitarian arguments. In fact, evidence suggests that there a number of ways in which sustainable procurement can lead to better environmental performance without increased cost – and in many cases create actual cost savings. They include:

Reducing long-term energy and water consumption by using whole life costing to highlight long-lived products which may have a low capital cost, but which are very expensive to run

Anticipating future regulations (e.g. on carbon dioxide emissions or use of chemicals which could be banned) so that costly measures do not have to be taken when they are introduced

Avoiding potentially large costs for disposal of products at the end of their life

Getting suppliers to also think about these opportunities, which can sometimes result in reconfigured solutions which provide increased environmental benefit at no additional cost (as with LMU's green prospectus).