D.1  What is Sustainable Design?

Sustainable design and development is an integrated approach to planning, designing, building, operating, and maintaining facilities in a collaborative and holistic manner among all stakeholders. It is a systematic process and engineering practice incorporating how-to guidance, checklist, tools, and scoring systems. Sustainable design integrates the decision-making across the installation, basing every decision on the greatest long-term benefits and recognizing the interrelationship of installation actions with the natural environment. In the context of Army installations, sustainable design is the design, construction, operation, and reuse/removal of the built environment in an environmentally-friendly and energy efficient manner. The basic objectives of sustainability are:

Criteria for sustainable success

Criteria for sustainable success

• Reduce the consumption of energy, land, materials, water, and other non-renewable resources. 

• Minimize the waste of energy, land, materials, water, and other limited resources.

• Create livable, healthy, and fiscally productive manmade environments for existing and future generations.

Designing for sustainability ultimately increases quality of life through better resource protection and use.  The design process must incorporate a change in mind-set that embraces less consumptive lifestyles. This mind-set change must include global interdependence, stewardship of the environment, social responsibility, and economic viability.  The new design mind-set must change from the traditional approach to recognize the impacts of every design choice on natural and cultural resources, and on local, regional, and global environments.

Appendix d