Grand & Toy, an affiliate of Office Depot, has launched a program to help Canadian businesses reduce their waste, energy consumption and chemical use by purchasing environmentally sustainable products.
The Greener Office Initiative uses Office Depot’s criteria to define environmentally sustainable products. It also assigns “shades of green” to qualifying products in the Grand & Toy catalogue. Products are rated green, light green, or dark green, depending on their environmental benefits relative to other products in their category.
The Grand & Toy website includes an online catalogue exclusively for these products. Business customers can access the catalogue by using the newly created Go Green button. Every product in the catalogue carries icons identifying shades of green, as well as recognized symbols for green attributes, such as recycled or energy efficient.
The company also created a Greener Office page to help customers understand the new program and to facilitate green purchasing practices.
In February, the Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council released to the public its Guidance for Leadership in Sustainable Purchasing v1.0.
Already, 80 organizations including Ecolab, Lockheed Martin, Office Depot, the US General Services Administration and the EPA, with more than $100 billion in purchasing power, have signed up for the Pilot Program, which will run through July.
