APS Joins Electric Utility Industry Sustainable Supply Chain Alliance
In 2008, APS joined the Electric Utility Industry Sustainable Supply Chain Alliance, a group of U.S. investor-owned electric companies that joined to work with non-fuel suppliers to improve environmental performance and advance sustainable business practices. The Alliance plans to develop sustainable supply-chain practices, with a goal to collaborate with the suppliers who provide the materials and services to the industry. This is done in an effort to further extend sustainabilty benefits and results for both the suppliers and the Alliance members and their stakeholders.  APS expects our Alliance partnership to have a substantial benefit on our supply chain sustainability efforts.  Most of our work with the Alliance in 2008 was in planning and we anticipate implementation of supplier programs to begin in 2009.

Environmentally Preferred Procurement - Life Cycle Analysis
Our EHS policy confirms our corporate support for green procurement, including sections on use of safe products and services, sustainable use of natural resources, stewardship of natural resources and pollution prevention. Our internal corporate procurement procedures further defines this policy:

The purchase of all products, including chemicals and hazardous materials, will only be made after consideration of the products' total life cycle. Prior to procurement, materials must be evaluated for environmental attributes such as recycled content, toxicity and disposal options. Employees making procurement decisions share in this responsibility in order to minimize adverse environmental impacts and future liability.

Investment Recovery
APS also has a very successful Investment Recovery department that manages surplus materials. The first objective is to re-deploy useful material within the company. For materials that can not be re-deployed, Investment Recovery may sell, recycle or donate materials. Disposal is the last option. In 2008, Investment Recovery recorded $4.7 million of total recovered dollars from recovered materials, and an additional $430,883 of avoided costs (e.g. avoided landfill costs on recycled materials). 

In 2008, about 13.1 million pounds of materials were recycled through Investment Recovery’s programs, up from 12.1 million pounds recycled in 2007.

Chemical Management
All hazardous materials used by the company are required to be reviewed by a Chemical Review Team prior to purchase in order to help ensure the use of materials with lower environmental and safety impacts. The teams review new products and compare them to existing products to see which provides the greatest overall benefit to the company. These teams also provide ongoing reviews of current products to evaluate for “greener” alternatives.

All chemical products are assigned an "EHS Rating" based on the Chemical Abstract Numbers (CAS) of the ingredients in the product and the products National Fire Protection Associaton (NFPA) rating. This allows us to quickly evaluate and compare the potential risks and hazards of the products we use, and to make better informed decisions regarding the approval of new products.

Through this process, APS has been able to reduce the number of chemical products across our system by about 50 percent over the past 10 years, and to also reduce the potential risk of the chemical products we use by substituting products with a lower potential for health or environmental impacts.

MSDS  
All chemical products used at APS are included in an electronic Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) system which is available to any employee across the company. APS facilities may use only those products approved for use and which are coded on this system. The electronic MSDS system provides other benefits to our EHS efforts since it allows us to quickly identify the specific chemical ingredients contained in the products at our facilities, while highlighting the risk profile of specific products. The MSDS system also allows users to print labels for secondary containers, and improves our ability to identify hazardous materials, in order to ensure such materials are properly stored and handled.

PCB Management
For a number of years, APS has had an aggressive PCB management program in place to manage PCB and PCB contaminated equipment.  APS has been successful in reducing the use of PCBs in electrical equipment by targeting suspected equipment based on manufacturer name and serial numbers. The PCB status of our electrical equipment is tracked in an electronic database, which is readily available across the company, including to our field operations via computers in their trucks. 

Between 2000 and 2008, APS has removed 16,022 pieces of equipment from the distribution and substation systems resulting in the disposal of over 3.3 million pounds of PCB containing material.