Greenest Park Initiative

Green Purchasing

Centennial Goal:  Yellowstone National Park will continue to build partnerships that align with its stewardship goals.

In 2007, Yellowstone spent approximately 20% of its operating budget on the procurement of supplies, equipment, and vehicles.

Through the Greenest Park Initiative, the Park will work with its concessioners to consolidate procurement, saving money and therefore enabling expanded use of environmentally preferable products and services.

Green Procurement Protocols

With significant regional purchasing power, Yellowstone can play an influential role by introducing environmentally sensitive purchasing protocols. However, purchases are subject to federal government regulations and different guidelines for centralized or decentralized purchases. This makes setting standards throughout the system challenging.

With the Yellowstone Park Foundation’s support, the Park will improve existing purchasing protocols to include environmentally sensitive guidelines and will educate it hundreds of employees about how to implement these new protocols.

Immediate Purchasing Improvements

In 2007, several recommendations were identified by Ecos Consulting for the Park to immediately improve environmentally sensitive purchasing.

With the Yellowstone Park Foundation’s support, the Park will endeavor to:

• Switch from plastic to aluminum beverage containers where possible.
• Mandate the use of bio-based plastic or paper bags and promote reusable bag sales.
• Mandate 100% post-consumer recycled content for most paper purchases.
• Promote sustainable packaging.
• Require soy-based printing for all Park materials.
• Switch to compostable tableware and cutlery.