Resource H

Vendor Questionnaire

What follows are general and specific questions to ask your vendors to qualify their environmental performance, which is subsidized by your purchasing dollars.

General Vendor Questions

1. What is the minimum wage paid to employees? What is the minimum wage paid to contract employees who work within your facilities (e.g., cleaning contractors)? What is the minimum wage paid at your top ten vendors? What is the ratio of your highest salary to your lowest salary for a full-time employee?

2. What is the ethnodemographic breakdown of your employees? Of management? As it relates to the U.S. Census data for the region? Do you provide specific training to HR personnel and managers in managing diversity?

3. What is the percentage diversion of waste produced in your facility?

4. What percent of employees do not walk to work or use bicycles, car/van pools, or public transportation to get to work?

5. Is the majority of lighting employed in the offices energy efficient? Is your office equipment Energy Star rated?

6. Please send us your mission statement and list your top socially and environmentally responsible sustainability practices.

7. What is the employee turnover rate? What is the average number of years of employment?

8. Do you incentivize employee social activism? Work-life balance? And if so, how?

9. If you produce an annual sustainability report, please send it or a link to it.

Plastic and Plastic Packaging Suppliers

1. Are the plastics you use for our products synthesized from renewable, natural ingredients (cotton, sawdust, etc.)? From natural gas? From petrochemicals?

2. Do the plastics produce volatiles or release gases during or after molding?

3. What are the percentages of nonusable waste material and recyclable scrap produced during molding?

4. Do you regrind and reuse your own scrap?

5. What are the dyes and fillers used in the plastic?

6. Are plasticizers used in the plastic? Are they made from natural ingredients (beef fat, soybean, or linseed oil) or synthetic ingredients (phosphate and phthalate)?

7. Do the plastics contain fire retardants? Are they halogenated? Are they listed on MSDS sheets?

8. What mold release chemicals are used, if any?

9. What inks and solvents are used in printing on the plastics? Are they free of lead, mercury, cadmium, and hexavalent chromium?

10. Is ink curing by thermal, UV, or radiation methods?

11. Have you had your containers tested for compliance with requirements for nontoxics in packaging?

12. What is the percentage, if any, of recycled material used in the manufacture of the plastic products we buy from you? What percentage is postconsumer recycled?

13. What plastic resins are used in the products we buy from you?

14. If the plastics are metallized, is this done with an electroless plating process or with vacuum metallization?

Fiberboard and Corrugated Box and Paper Bag Supplies

1. What is the percentage of recycled fiber and postconsumer waste in the boxes?

2. Is the fiber unbleached or bleached without chlorine?

3. Are you in compliance with voluntary requirements for reduction of toxics in packaging? If yes, what are your current measured levels of lead, mercury, cadmium, and hexavalent chromium?

4. Do you print with soy-based inks? If not, what is your percent solids?

5. Do you use inks, dyes, and pigments that meet the requirements of ASTM D-4236 for nontoxicity?

6. What is the percentage of scrap from die cutting the boxes? What is its disposition (is it recycled)?

Suppliers

1. For each of the top five chemicals you supply us, list the percentages of the principal ingredients (other than water) derived in whole from plants, derived in whole from plants using organic agricultural practices, synthesized from plant materials, synthesized from chemicals (petrochemicals), or mined and/or refined. Please list each chemical separately.

2. For chemicals sold in bulk in drums and/or buckets, do you have a program for taking back the drums and/or buckets and either refilling them or recycling them?

3. For any materials sold to us, did you have any reporting requirements under the Toxic Release Inventory (SARA Title III Sec 313) program? Please send copies of or links to the most recent publicly disclosed reports.

4. Are the chemicals sold to us biodegradable? What test method did you employ?

5. Are you a member, a signatory of, or in compliance with any of the following voluntary programs:

Chemical Manufacturers Association Responsible CARE program?

CERES Principles?

Global Environmental Management Initiative (GEMI)?

International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Business

Charter for Sustainable Development?

International Standards Organization (ISO) ISO

14001 Standard for Environmental Management Systems?

Other?

6. Do you have regular internal or third-party environmental audits for environmental regulatory compliance? For environmental management systems? Of regulated and nonregulated releases to air or water and solid and hazardous waste?

7. Do you participate in any of the EPA’s voluntary Common Sense Pollution Prevention initiatives? Please list the programs you participated in for the current year.

8. Do you participate in any of the state or local government voluntary pollution prevention initiatives?

9. Do you prepare an annual environmental report available to shareholders and/or the public? Does it comply with the Public Environmental Reporting Initiative (PERI) Guidelines? Please include a copy of your most recent report.