Sustainability Resources

Connect with a diverse network of organizations offering resources to learn, develop, and integrate sustainable design processes into your workflow.

Putting Sustainability into Practice 
Explore five architecture firm best practices for implementing sustainable designs and specifications and staying on top of evolving sustainability standards and products.

Healthier Materials Protocol
AIA’s Healthier Materials Protocol provides clear, practical methods and tools to help you track and integrate sustainable materials selection in your design and delivery process.

AIA Framework for Design Excellence
The AIA Framework for Design Excellence represents the defining principles of design excellence in the 21st century. Comprised of 10 principles and accompanied by searching questions, the framework informs progress toward a zero-carbon, healthy, just, resilient, and equitable built environment.

Sustainability Workshops & Goal Setting 
An article on tried and tested tips and techniques for facilitating a successful business sustainability workshop. This includes ideas, strategies, tools, agenda and more.

Sustainable Purchasing 
Meet the Sustainable Purchasing Guide: This guide is a helpful tool that gives you the power to transform everyday purchases into action toward a more sustainable future. Whether you are buying for yourself or your whole department, this guide can help you make more informed, sustainable purchases.

Guide to Energy Efficient Lighting 
Lighting accounts for about 15% of an average home’s electricity use, so it pays to make energy-efficient choices. PDF guide to energy efficient lighting.

Explore a curated collection of tools and databases designed to help you learn, develop, and integrate sustainable design practices into your work.

AIA Framework for Design Excellence
The AIA Framework for Design Excellence represents the defining principles of design excellence in the 21st century. Comprised of 10 principles and accompanied by searching questions, the framework informs progress toward a zero-carbon, healthy, just, resilient, and equitable built environment.

EPD Library
EPDs signal a manufacturer’s commitment to measuring and reducing the environmental impact of its products and services and report these impacts in a hyper-transparent way. With an EPD, manufacturers report comparable, objective and third-party verified data that show the good, the bad and the evil about the environmental performance of their products and services.

HPD Collaborative
The leading open standard for evaluating and reporting product chemistry in building materials, empowering manufacturers and building professionals to create safer environments.

The Red List
The Living Building Challenge (LBC) Red List is a list of chemicals representing the “worst in class” substances prevalent in the building industry that pose serious risks to human health and the environment. Since its inception in 2006, the Red List has been an intuitive tool for communicating the need to stop using harmful chemicals.

DECLARE Database
A Platform to Share And Find Healthy Building Products. Manufacturers voluntarily disclose product information on easy-to-read Declare labels. These labels report all product ingredients and use a simple color code system to flag chemicals of concern. Further information is provided on the product’s final assembly locations, life expectancy, end-of-life options, and overall compliance with relevant requirements of the Living Building Challenge (LBC).

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an analysis of the impact one object has on the world around it. But who benefits from it? How does it work exactly? In this guide, you get an in-depth, non-technical overview of what a Life Cycle Assessment really is, the different approaches to it, how it works in practice, and who can benefit from it.

Education is the foundation of sustainable design. Discover targeted green accreditation opportunities to advance your personal and professional growth while contributing to a sustainable future for all.

LFA (Living Future Accreditation)
The International Living Future Institute brings together individuals and organizations that are bringing forth advanced solutions for reinventing our relationship with the natural world, the built environment, and each other. With Living Future Accreditation, practitioners gain an advantage in the workplace by deepening their knowledge and demonstrating their expertise in advanced sustainability.

LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)
A LEED credential denotes proficiency in today’s sustainable design, construction and operations standards. More than 203,000 professionals have earned a LEED credential to help advance their careers. Showcase your knowledge, experience and credibility in the green building marketplace as a LEED professional.

ENV-SP
The Envision Framework is quickly becoming globally recognized as a highly credible approach to sustainable, resilient, and equitable infrastructure. The framework is supported by the Envision Sustainability Professional (ENV SP) designation—an increasingly important credential for any professional involved in civil infrastructure. Since its inception, more than 15,000 professionals around the world have obtained their ENV SP credential, which has equipped them with the knowledge to apply the ground-breaking Envision concepts to their daily work.

Fitwel Ambassador
Fitwel is the world’s leading certification system committed to building health for all®. Generated by expert analysis of 7,000+ academic research studies, Fitwel is implementing a vision for a healthier future where all buildings and communities are enhanced to strengthen health and well-being.

Well AP
The WELL AP credential denotes expertise in the WELL Standard (WELL), a library of evidence-based building and organizational strategies that can improve the health and well-being of people everywhere.

Breeam AP
BRE Academy is the leading training provider for individuals and businesses in construction, manufacturing, real estate, infrastructure and public sectors. Our science-led courses address defining challenges in the built environment, including sustainability, climate change, net zero carbon, fire safety, information management, and indoor environmental quality.