Environmentally Preferable Procurement

Full Circle staff are recognized for our pioneering work in green procurement, particularly at the federal level.  In some projects—as with our National Parks work, or market development for recycled-content paper and  re-refined motor oil—purchasing is front and center. In other projects—whether with green schools or green business assistance—we work closely with clients and program targets to incorporate green purchasing principles and messaging.

Purchasing is integral to all aspects of an organization’s operations. Procurement staff serve as gatekeepers for the materials that flow into and out of an organization, and therefore have tremendous influence over product and service choices.  This selection of goods and services is unavoidably intertwined with  raw material extraction, manufacturing, use and disposal of products.   Procurement staff, and the policies and guidelines under which they operate, therefore have the potential to minimize environmental impacts associated with the life-cycle of the products and services they specify.

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Market & Economic Development

Economic development and environmental protection not only can co-exist, they must. It is the terms of this coexistence that allow for discussion and disagreement, and open the door for creativity.

Full Circle's work in this arena ranges from straightforward market expansion for environmentally-preferable products, to developing recovery and processing infrastructure for under-utilized materials, to changing the terms of the debate by moving costs away from ratepayers, taxpayers, and local governments and toward producers and consumers.

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Naming and Branding

David Stitzhal is particularly proud of his work helping to name and brand organizations and programs. His contributions have helped organize, put boundaries around, and give life and energy to coalescing groups and projects. David was wholly or largely responsible for the following names, all utilized in an on-going basis by clients, many to this day.

• Northwest Product Stewardship Council. The Product Stewardship Council name has since been replicated across the U.S.
• Federal Electronics Challenge. This ten year federal program has only recently been subsumed under the Environmental Protection Agency.
• PH:ARM  (Pharmaceuticals from Households: A Return Mechanism)
• EPEAT (Environmentally Preferable Environmental Assessment Tool). David was part of the small consultant-client team in a windowless room in Chicago that crafted this name, now used globally.
• UPSTREAM. David serves on the board of directors of this organization, formerly known as the Product Policy Institute. David is responsible for developing the current name.
• Recycling Is Sweet.  David created this tagline now imprinted within the recycling chasing arrows on thousands of three-inch chocolate medallions each year.  The give-aways are used extensively in commercial recycling outreach for the City of Bellevue and other programs. Stitzhal expanded this brand by developing a Recycling Is Bright chocolate medallion centered around a compact fluorescent twirly bulb. And intern Rosemary Cole developed the tagline for the oil filter recycling chocolate medallion - Recycling is Slick
• Wake Up With Energy. This workshop series engages and informs, as well as feeds and caffeinates, property managers and other program participants in the Urban Smart Bellevue Campaign sponsored by Puget Sound energy, with a goal of reducing 16 million kilowatt hours in the downtown Bellevue, WA business core.

Eden Mack, Full Circle Senior Project Manager, named and framed the Refresh Recycling programs currently proving so successful in Redmond and Bellevue.  These outreach and technical assistance programs encourage businesses to improve upon and expand their recycling, buy-recycled, waste prevention and resource conservation practices.

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Outreach & Education

Effective outreach and education have long been a strong suit of Full Circle staff; they make a huge difference in our work. Our clear communication is equally at the core of our business assistance, elementary school recycling programs, legislative testimony, or client relations.

The world of garbage brings us in touch with business owners, custodians, property managers, waste service providers, elected officials, clients, materials processors, Fortune 100 manufacturers, and myriad other people and organizations . No matter with whom we interact, Full Circle staff strives for clear, succinct, and honest information and communication.

Our staff has training and experience in community-based social marketing, facilitation, and stakeholder engagement. These and other tools are critical for listening to, understanding, and effecting positive behavior-change in our audiences.

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Policy Development & Legislative Support

Full Circle's twenty-plus years in the resource conservation field has been uniquely balanced between concrete, one-on-one business assistance on one hand, and policy development at the local, state and federal level on the other hand.

Drawing on rich experience within each realm, Full Circle has achieved a powerful cross-pollination between the two worlds. A morning spent on-site with a custodian is of equal value to an afternoon spent before a legislative committee. Each informs the other.

Indeed, each requires the other if we are going to achieve the systemic changes necessary for a balanced, on-going reliance on our natural resources.

A sample of Full Circle's diverse policy work includes:

• Development and implementation of purchasing policies for federal agencies (e.g. national parks)
• Guidance on state agency options for supporting green design (Oregon Dept. of Environmental Quality)
• Support for product stewardship approaches to product management (testimony to WA legislature)
• Options for institutionally supporting system-wide recycling improvements (school districts)

With graduate-level policy experience, professional degrees in diverse fields, and decades of real world experience, Full Circle staff stands ready. We can help you think through, inform, clarify, refine, deepen, and communicate your policy positions, and create effective strategies for implementing those positions.

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Research & Writing

Do you want to know more about something?  Ask Full Circle.

We are insatiably curious, doggedly persistent, and expansively connected. We are also effective listeners, deep absorbers, quick studies, succinct summarizers, and clear writers.

Whether it’s recycling markets, stakeholder positions, environmental impacts, policy implications, regulatory clarity, or good restaurants, let us explore and learn with you.

Full Circle staff stands ready to support your research-needs with: issue definition, boundary framing, knowledge acquisition, executive analysis, recommendations development, and results communication.

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Stakeholder Engagement

It takes multiple parties at the table to make a full circle. Creating that loop requires:

• Comprehensive subject-matter expertise
• Knowledge of and natural ease with process and group dynamics
• Careful recruitment of appropriate and sufficient parties
• Comfort with discomfort and turbulence
• Skill in applying mediation and facilitation principles
• Clear guidelines going in
• Willingness to course-correct during the journey, and
• Ability to achieve a landing in which all parties feel substantially grounded.

On behalf of clients, Full Circle staff has served as a delegate to stakeholder dialogues (e.g. carpet, electronics, pharmaceuticals).  We have also directly organized and implemented stakeholder engagement (e.g. pharmaceuticals, automotive, carpet).

As the negotiation aphorism teaches: If you are not at the table, you may end up on the menu. In that light, let Full Circle help you arrange your guest list, catering options, wine list, and decor to assure a positive outcome for all stakeholders.

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Surveys and Executive Interviews: Design and Implementation

Building on Full Circle's strengths in research, writing, and stakeholder engagement, we are equally proud of our achievements developing and applying surveys and executive interviews.

These powerful, efficient tools—when well designed, carefully implemented, and applied in the right situations—can be equally effective in gathering actionable information and in building consensus and support.

We have successfully implemented straightforward phone interviews as well as designed and coordinated crack-of-dawn breakfast focus groups for busy business leaders.

If executive interviews and surveys are the right tool for you, we commit to leveraging our expansive trove of existing contacts, doggedly pursuing the right people if we don't know them already, constructing an effective research frame, creatively crafting a survey structure (breakfast meeting anyone?), productively communicating with target stakeholders, and clearly communicating our findings and actionable recommendations.

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Technical Assistance & Engagement

Full Circle has been at the forefront of business outreach and assistance since its inception more than twenty years ago. Working with businesses continues to be a strong suit of our people and programs, and has been a core of Full Circle's success.

Full Circle staff have proven equally adept at working with individual custodians, high-rise building owners, tenant recycling leaders, property managers, waste and recycling collection companies, small business owners, and municipal recycling coordinators.

With our put-you-at-ease-and-get-you-jazzed people skills and a detailed technical knowledge, our efforts have resulted in large, measurable waste diversion and increased recycling. Our contributions to client's business programs have included developing effective outreach and education materials as well as providing structural and service-level recommendations.

Our work often goes beyond recycling and waste management to support businesses in improving their energy use, overall sustainability efforts, buy-recycled practices, water conservation and greenhouse gas impacts.

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Turning 24

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Waste Characterization

Mine Your Own Business™. We convey this simple core message to the hundreds of businesses we have helped to prevent waste, reduce disposal costs, and expand recycling. We know you can't mine for value without a sense of the resources you are looking for. What's in them thar hills?

Full Circle's David Stitzhal led the design-and-implement team for one of the nation's first comprehensive waste-stream sorts in 1989 (for Chemung County, NY). Since then we have been sorting trash and harvesting it for information critical to helping a business know what steps to take to minimize their waste stream footprint.

Whether your business is located in a high-rise office building, an elementary school, a strip mall, a college campus or an apartment complex, we can coordinate with your facilities staff, custodial staff, property managers and owners, employees, and garbage & recycling service providers to develop and implement a waste stream characterization to meet your needs and fit your budget.

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