Welcome to Green Guide for Health Care™, thehealthcare sector’s first quantifiable sustainable design toolkitintegrating enhanced environmental and health principles and practicesinto the planning, design, construction, operations and maintenance oftheir facilities. This Guide provides the healthcare sectorwith a voluntary, self-certifying metric toolkit of best practices thatdesigners, owners, and operators can use to guide and evaluate theirprogress towards high performance healing environments. Health carefacilities present both a challenge and opportunity in the developmentand implementation of sustainable design, construction and operationspractices. Issues such as 24/7 operations, energy and water useintensity, chemical use, infection control requirements and formidableregulatory requirements can pose significant obstacles to theimplementation of currently accepted sustainability protocols.Furthermore, it is appropriate that guidelines customized for thehealth care sector reflect the collective fundamental mission toprotect and enhance individual and community health, and that thoseguidelines acknowledge the intrinsic relationship between the builtenvironment and ecological health. As health care institutions evolve adesign language for high performance healing environments, they havethe opportunity to highlight the associated health-based benefits. Thisin turn can inspire the broader adoption of health-based designprinciples in other building sectors. This document is neither intendedto establish regulatory requirements, nor to be viewed as a minimumstandard for design, construction or operations. Rather it is designedto serve as a voluntary educational guide for early adopters ofsustainable design, construction, and operations practices, toencourage continuous improvement in the health care sector, and toprovide market signals to catalyze a richer palette of strategies forthose who follow the early adopters. As the general level of greenbuilding practice rises, it is anticipated that the Green Guidewill be updated to encourage continued leadership and higher levels ofrigor associated with creating high performance healing environments.
www.gghc.org/