Week Four

This week consisted of more work regarding the professional services and goods excel sheet. While doing so, Mr. Bruskotter went through some of the services with me and helping me get a better understanding of where the city was looking to grow in terms of becoming greener along the supply chain. From our discussion, I learned that the city was looking to grow in one of the sectors that is generally not accounted for when doing their greenhouse gas emission inventory, scope 3 emissions. Scope 3 emissions are defined as indirect emissions not included in the consumption of electricity of Scope 2 emissions. This can include activities such as the extraction of production materials and transportation of services not determined by the reporting agency.

Mr. Bruskotter then sent me to the links of the case studies from the summit he attended in Washington D.C. for the Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council. He told me to take notes on the ones that seemed interesting to me. From the studies, one of the ones that stuck out to me was the Greening the Fleet study by the City of Portland. When I was combing through the professional services and goods of the city's purchases, I found that a large sector was dedicated to the transportation sector. I found that the City of Portland was able to successfully reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by implementing hybrid technology into their vehicles as well as complementing these changes with electric vehicles. The City of Santa Monica has similarly implemented some of these changes and are looking to go even further by instituting the improvements set forth by the EPA in regards to their SmartWay transit program. The SmartWay transit program looks to reduce transportation-related emissions which have harmful effects on the planet's climate and an environment.