Consumers influence markets through their purchases and that’s exponentially more true for large institutions such as Yale.
For the past 15 years, Joe Mastracchio has worked to make Yale more sustainable by improving how the university purchases goods and services—and seeking out alternatives with fewer environmental impacts.
As Senior Category Sourcing Manager in Yale’s Procurement Department, Mastracchio oversees a vast swath of purchasing for Yale’s medical and research equipment and supplies—from laboratory freezers to rubber gloves. Over the years, he has combined his deep knowledge of procurement and his passion for sustainability to source goods with lower emissions and less waste.
“Joe has been a consistent proponent of sustainability at Yale for a number of years, lending his incredible expertise on procurement to help inform sustainable best practices and ensure that Yale is walking the talk,” says Lindsay Crum, Associate Director in the Office of Sustainability. “I can always count on him to have candid and engaging discussions, while also getting great work accomplished.”
Mastracchio grew up in West Haven, Connecticut in the 1970s at the dawn of the modern environmental movement. His appreciation for the natural world developed during hunting and fishing trips with his father, and from seeing woods they loved clear-cut for development.
Mastracchio began his career working for a chemical company. “I remember after the second day of working there walking out of the building and thinking, this is so against my grain. I’m not doing this just for money,” he recalls. “As I got near my car I thought, I need car insurance. I have to pay it next week. And I walked back into that building.”
Though not ideal, the job afforded Mastracchio the chance to take on a range of roles in different departments, from technical services, plating, research, and, eventually, purchasing—where he employed a no-waste ethos to save the company money and reduce environmental waste. “I just don’t believe in waste. It’s always been in my DNA,” he explains.
After arriving at Yale in 2008, Mastracchio was introduced to Julie Newman, then-director of the Office of Sustainability. The two hit it off and quickly identified the need to collect purchasing data in order to find areas where Yale could reduce waste and source products that were healthier for people and planet.
Making change at the institutional level can be a complex challenge, but Mastracchio has racked up significant sustainability wins for Yale over the years by using data and persuasion. Several years ago, he co-led a research project called the Healthy Furniture Initiative that helped to phase out fire retardants and other chemicals of concern—including formaldehyde, VOCs, and PFASs—from university-purchased furniture.
“It lowered the cost but more importantly it took those chemicals out of the fabrics that everybody was sitting on every day,” Mastracchio says.
Reducing paper use is another of Mastracchio’s project wins, achieved by working with a large group within the University. By deploying a simple software tool called Papercut that tracks and monitors paper usage for printing in real time, the university reduced the number of printed pages by approximately 50 percent in its first year using the software.
More recently, he helped to influence a broader change in university purchasing: Yale’s Requests for Proposal, or RFPs, now include sustainability criteria that are considered when awarding a bid for purchased goods and services—which account for a large share of the university’s greenhouse gas emissions. Like everything else, it wasn’t a simple change to make, but one Mastracchio was willing to fight for.
On a daily basis, Mastracchio works with vendors to ask granular questions about their operations, which has helped his team notch sustainability wins for Yale. “I’ll be asking things like, How many trucks are you using? Do you have a local warehouse? Can we reuse these delivery boxes? Where is your produce coming from? Where are the farms? Is it pesticide-free?”
Though low-key in demeanor, Mastracchio admits that he can be a bulldog for sustainability—an apt quality for a Yale employee. “I tend to carry more of a sledgehammer than a tack hammer,” he says chuckling.
Each month, Yale Sustainability features a ‘Sustainability Champion of the Month’—a student, staff, or faculty member who is leading the charge toward a more sustainable campus. If you know a sustainability champion at Yale, email sustainability@yale.edu and tell us about them.