Objectives

 

The Green Guide is a voluntary, self-certifying metric toolkit of health-based best practices, customized for the healthcare sector. Designers, owners, and operators use the Green Guide to guide and evaluate progress towards high performance healing environments. Healthcare facilities present unique opportunities in developing and implementing sustainable design, construction and operations practices. Issues such as 24/7 operations, energy and water use intensity, chemical use, infection control, and regulatory requirements can pose significant obstacles to implementing sustainability protocols.

The Green Guide for Healthcare responds to the unique positioning of the healthcare industry through:

• supporting healthcare’s fundamental mission to protect and enhance individual and community health
• acknowledging the intrinsic relationship between the built environment and ecological health.
• utilizing the precautionary principle to underpin decision-making.

As healthcare institutions create high performing healing environments, they highlight the associated health benefits. This may in turn inspire the broader adoption of health-based design principles in other building sectors. The Green Guide does not establish regulatory requirements or minimum standards for design, construction or operations. It is a voluntary educational tool for sustainable design, construction, and operations practices. The Green Guide encourages continuous improvement in the healthcare sector and provides market signals to accelerate market transformation towards a richer palette of methods and materials informed by health-related outcomes.

Updates and Information

The Green Guide is an evolving document. It is periodically updated to respond to new information gleaned from pilot and registered projects as well as the broader marketplace of green building best practices. Website registrants receive email notifications of new developments.

Product Endorsement

The Green Guide for Healthcare does not endorse products nor recommend for or against the purchase of specific products. In some instances, the Green Guide references generic product types that may contribute to achieving credit goals.