San Francisco's Green Purchasing Program: Using purchasing power to shift demand toward safer alternatives

Introduction

Adopted in 2003, San Francisco’s Precautionary Purchasing framework applies the City’s precautionary principle to procurement: rather than treating environmental health impacts as an afterthought, the City sets product-category criteria meant to reduce undesirable impacts and then uses purchasing power to shift demand toward safer alternatives.

At the center is SF Environment’s (SFE) Green Purchasing Program, which develops and maintains the SF Approved listings as the City’s practical “shopping list” for compliant purchasing. On SFApproved.org, products and services are categorized (e.g., Required, Suggested, Limited Use, Prohibited) and paired with category-specific specifications to guide buyers toward safer, lower-impact options.

Under the program, SFE sets priorities and establishes criteria for Targeted Product Categories, then creates an Approved Alternatives List for those categories (including posting criteria publicly). Once an Approved Alternatives List exists for a product in a targeted category, City departments entering or extending a covered contract generally must purchase only from that list.

Reporting implications for companies

While the ordinance is a City procurement rule, it creates real compliance and disclosure expectations for vendors, manufacturers, distributors, and service providers that want to sell into San Francisco’s municipal supply chain—especially in categories labeled “Required.” In practice, that often means:

• Build eligibility into bids and catalogs - If your products fall into a targeted category where SF Environment has established criteria and an Approved Alternatives List, City buyers may be obligated to select from that list for covered contracts.

• Prepare substantiation for “green” claims - SF Environment screens products using criteria that emphasize performance, impact, and cost—and the City distinguishes between “Required” (meets objectives, generally on citywide contract) and “Suggested” (meets impact criteria, but performance/cost data may be incomplete).

• Expect location-of-production visibility - The ordinance requires Approved Alternatives Lists to indicate where commodities are produced—information that can become relevant in purchase decisions.

• Be ready for compliance monitoring via sales reporting - SF Environment’s municipal “Buy Green” reporting process relies on supplier sales reports (often required by City contract terms) to evaluate department compliance and identify barriers.

• Treat misrepresentation as a contract-risk issue - If a contractor falsely represents product attributes or knowingly supplies noncompliant commodities, the contracting officer may impose sanctions or take actions to ensure compliance, and the City may pursue enforcement options available under relevant Administrative Code authorities.

While the SF Green Purchasing Program and SFApproved screening focus on performance, impact, and cost rather than mandating specific documents across all categories, vendors might be asked to provide detailed environmental information to demonstrate how their products meet the City’s criteria. In practice, life-cycle oriented documentation such as Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) or other third-party certifications can be included in submissions to support claims of lower environmental impact, even if they are not universally required for listing.

Current status and future outlook

SF’s Green Purchasing Program is mature and operational: San Francisco, in 2003, pioneered the adoption of the Precautionary Principle in public procurement in the United States. SF Environment maintains the SF Approved platform for City staff, publishes purchasing specifications and product categorizations, and produces recurring compliance reporting based on vendor sales data.

Looking ahead, the most likely direction of travel is incremental but meaningful: expanding/refreshing targeted categories and criteria, improving data coverage (including gaps like certain small purchases), and using the SF Approved taxonomy (“Required/Suggested/Limited Use/Prohibited”) to tighten compliance expectations across more spend.

Resources

• San Francisco Environment Code – Official text

• How products get on the list

• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about the program

• Guide for Manufacturers & Vendors

• Guide for Large Organizations

• Guide for Small Businesses & Homes

• Annual Municipal Buy Green Report (example of compliance tracking via supplier sales reports)