Office Depot announced that 25 organizations from across the U.S. were recognized by the Company for Leadership in Greener Purchasing. The awards were presented during Office Depot's Greener Purchasing Summit & Awards Ceremony on November 15 in Oakland, California.

To supplement the Awards Ceremony, speakers from Office Depot, Google, Saatchi & Saatchi, and the University of Washington presented on greener purchasing best practices. David Gottfried, founder of the U.S. Green Building Council and CEO of Regenerative Ventures, delivered the keynote address.

"Greener purchasing of office supplies can serve as a good proxy for an organization's overall environmental commitment," said Yalmaz Siddiqui, Senior Director of Environmental Strategy for Office Depot. "The winners are an elite group -- our top 25 greenest purchasers from over 7,500 customers that we evaluated using our unique green spend analysis and reporting tools."

The awards are based primarily on the percentage of the customers' expenditure with Office Depot (from January to June 2011) on products with greener attributes such as recycled content; energy-efficiency; non-toxicity; and/or ecolabels such as FSC, EPEAT, GreenSeal, and EcoLogo.