United States federal contracting and pollution prevention: how award type and facility characteristics affect adoption of source reduction techniques in four manufacturing sectors

Abstract

There is reason to believe that hazardous emissions generated by industrial actors that have been awarded government contracts have different pollution prevention action patterns compared to those that have not been awarded government contracts. This is important because pollution prevention actions are a key inroad to alleviating environmental contamination generally and related human health effects. Specifically, we find that US-based industrial polluters tend to respond to Federal incentives to reduce costs by making efficiency improvements. Using publicly available purchasing, toxics release, and pollution prevention data from 2001 to 2012 for 458 081 transactions and 9910 facilities, we investigate the impact of contract award structure on facility environmental performance. We fit regression models to understand more about how the number of reported voluntary pollution prevention actions and reductions in total toxic chemical waste managed at each facility in terms of three types of contract awards. We find that industrial actors that have been awarded incentive contracts not only report more pollution prevention actions, but that these actions are more likely to result in significant pollution reduction. Results inform US Federal purchasing policy decisions and support earlier theoretical development at the intersection of ecological modernization, super-industrialization, and the role of government in facilitating transitions to green technology. In addition, greener purchasing decisions can have a broad impact on human health by reducing pollution in communities.

Toxic waste and public procurement: The defense sector as a disproportionate contributor to pollution from public–private partnerships

“…Data are aggregated to the award level per year and then linked to the facility. Additional covariates from these data include agency issuing the award, total award amount, number of bids, type of contract (fixed‐price, cost‐plus, or incentive, see Hill et al, 2021 for a study on how award type is linked to environmental performance), and number of awards.…”

“…The environmental impacts of military activities are well documented (Hooks & Smith, 2005) with other research on the disproportionate impact of military and defense activity on carbon emissions (Jorgenson & Clark, 2009) and other environmental impacts (Gould, 2007). Defense is not exempt from developing environmental management systems, but it is largely exempt from environmental regulations due to its mission to protect national security (Oglanis & Loizidou, 2017) and there is evidence that firms in the defense industry are lagging with regards to environmental technology (Hill et al, 2021). This has been explored with regards to waivers for the U.S. Navy program for disposal of ships (Zippel, 2013) and extensive studies of the Portuguese and other nations' militaries revealing that they lag behind in public sector environmental performance metrics (Ramos et al, 2007).…”

Challenges for Compliance with Industrial Effluent Regulations – the Industry Perspective

“…Among the participants, there is some consensus that government incentives, such as lower optimal taxes for industries that implement effluent recycling technologies, or that focus on zero discharges, are likely to assist industries in striving toward self-regulation. The industry will take more pollution prevention measures that will significantly reduce pollution [49].…”