Oberlin’s purchasing and auxiliary services director, Gary Koepp, released a memo confirming and promoting the College’s commitment to buying environmentally-responsible items. The message is urgent and sincere. But it was written in October 1991.

The memo begins by explaining that, “The Office of Purchasing...has embarked on an aggressive program of stocking, sourcing and negotiations in order to advance the use of recycled paper products...on the Oberlin College campus.” The attached catalogue includes a smattering of recycled notebooks, paper pads, envelopes and more, all available for purchase by department heads.

“We Believe in Recycling,” the catalogue proudly states at the top, and continues, “It’s time we all got serious about saving resources. Recycling isn’t just a fad...it’s an integral part of the effort to preserve our way of life. Oberlin is proud to present a carefully-chosen selection of recycled or recyclable products.”

Fourteen years later, despite its good intentions, the memo’s legacy is nonexistent. During the 2004-2005 school year, barely 16 percent of the paper products and office supplies purchased by the College contained recycled content.

Even that statistic is unreliable; in the world of paper, “recycled” is a relative term. Once a product is given that label, Koepp said, “The question is: of that, how much is actually recycled content? Is it 100 percent? Is it two percent?”

Staples, the company Oberlin has a contract with for all office supply purchasing, offers a wide range of “recycled” options, including the ideal 100 percent post-consumer recycled variety. But individual departments have control over their own purchasing and frequently when orders are made, environmental stewardship doesn’t factor into the decision.

With this and greater goals in mind, Koepp has initiated what he describes as an educational campaign to encourage socially-conscious purchasing on campus. The first step has been a small but significant change to the Purchasing and Auxiliary Services website. As of Nov. 21, the purchasing home page now contains links to the social responsibility and environmental impact statements of companies with whom Oberlin has contracts.

So far, the list has links to statements by Staples as well as SteelCase, a building design corporation, and Verizon. Koepp said the list will grow longer as Purchasing adds other corporations’ statements.

“I’m trying to spread the word that Oberlin does deal with socially responsible corporate vendors,” Koepp said. “That doesn’t say that they’re 100 percent holy-holy,” he continued, since, “Everyone has a problem.” But Koepp wants Purchasing to practice what the rest of the College preaches about social and environmental consciousness, and is willing to work to improve the department’s record.

If Oberlin wants to increase its recycled purchasing, the most important difference can be made through direct contact with individual departments all over campus, hopefully with more lasting efforts than those made in 1991. Department heads need to know that recycled products are easy to include in their Staples orders, and may in some cases save money.

Koepp mentioned one remarkable difference that recycled purchasing has made. Since switching to recycled toner cartridges made by Data Products from Hewlett Packard’s unrecycled version, Purchasing has saved over $17,000 a year.

The Purchasing Department’s concerns extend outside the boundary of environmental responsibility. Koepp also works with the Purchasing Committee, a different entity that is in charge of overseeing the College’s compliance with its anti-sweatshop policy.

Chaired by Politics professor Marc Blecher, the committee includes the acting Director of Athletics Joe Karlgaard, bookstore manager Abby Bellis, politics professor Chris Howell, Koepp himself, his assistant Rick Snodgrass and several students.

“Everybody in the College who buys apparel is supposed to check with the Purchasing Committee to make sure that they’re buying it from vendors who comply with our code of conduct,” Blecher said.

This does not always happen, so the Purchasing Committee is in part dedicated to raising awareness.

“Part of our job is to go out and make sure that everybody knows about this policy,” Blecher said.

Although athletic purchases make up a large portion of what the committee has to examine, the bookstore presents a slightly different challenge because it is managed by Barnes and Noble, which has its own anti-sweatshop code of conduct. Blecher said the committee’s policy has never in the past come into conflict with that of the bookstore. If it did, the College would negotiate with Bellis either to remove a particular company from the store, or add another, as long as it complied with Barnes and Noble’s own policy.

The committee has recently looked into aligning itself with the apparel policies of the Workers’ Rights Consortium, of which the College is already a member. Blecher said that the WRC has recently created more proactive options for apparel purchasing.

“Instead of just being against companies that are bad, they’re now moving to the next level of encouraging colleges and universities who are affiliated with them to purchase from vendors who are good,” he explained. The WRC provides a list of approved vendors that colleges can choose from.

The Committee’s work is an ongoing process of extensive research on apparel companies, which involves contact with individual companies as well as research from outside evaluators and news sources, and continual efforts to ensure that the entire campus is complying with the sweatshop-free code.

Blecher cited one recent sign of progress: the college recently switched to a new supplier for uniforms for college staff, from a previous company that did not comply with the code of conduct.