Sustainability Guidance for Suppliers
We developed a web page called Responsible Business Practices (For Suppliers) as a resource guide for responding to our Sourcing Events.
Who we buy from
The County wants to do business with vendors who share our values of community and environmental stewardship and responsible business practices. The County cares about how its business partners operate, because that is a reflection on Multnomah County. The County also believes that in order to support our community (local and global in scale) we need to help our business partners become better and stronger, and more sustainable.
The Triple Bottom Line of Sustainability is defined as practices that are:
environmentally friendly,
socially equitable and,
have positive prosperity and economic impacts for our community.
The Sustainable Purchasing and Social Equity policy is not intended to punish businesses that have not implemented the practice of the Triple Bottom Line of Sustainability , but serves to help them identify ways they can be environmental stewards, support social equity, and create opportunities for economic impacts for our community.
This can happen in two areas: the things we buy, and who we buy them from.
- We want businesses to practice environmental stewardship.
- We value businesses that seek to be innovative in creating pathways to developing and supporting small businesses.
- We value ethical labor practices and businesses that take good care of their employees and their community in the delivery of services for positive economic impacts.
We hope that our vendors will see this as an opportunity to be innovators and join Multnomah County in being leaders in the practice of sustainability.
Also check the following websites for additional "green" specifications/contracts information from other public agencies:
EPA EPP
City of Portland
We will add more examples over time, so we encourage you to periodically visit the site for updates.
Questions? Comments? Please email Sustainable Purchasing Coordinator, Shawn Postera, at shawn.postera@mutco.us. We appreciate your feedback.