As a student organization looking to the future, the AIAS emphasizes the need for sustainability and resiliency to be at the forefront of design moving forward. Charged with the need to, “define, advocate for, and support sustainable for chapters,” and to, “hold the AIAS accountable for and assess its efforts and initiatives towards Sustainability and Resiliency,” the 2019-2020 Sustainability and Resiliency Task Force compiled this comprehensive Best Practices Guide.
The vision statement of the committee reads:
“We as a committee have created this guide as a resource for students, schools, and communities at large to address sustainable practices. We cover many different topics such as recycling, building practices, and sustainability-focused organizations. Additionally, these topics are analyzed through three different lenses: school/chapter, community, and individual. Our hope is that AIAS members will use this manual to enhance their projects and everyday lives with sustainable practices that are fun and easy to implement.”
The guide has six overarching topics, (Recycling, Materials, You and Your School, Building Methods, Renewable Energies, Advocacy and Leaders), along with multiple subtopics to make this guide super user-friendly. The task force wanted this guide to help individuals lead more sustainable lives with recommendations for simple tasks, as well as more complex approaches that involve collaboration with schools or communities. This guide is chock full of information we don’t think about day to day on how our actions impact our planet, and you will definitely learn from the committees research into this wide array of topics.
All of these recommendations are highly adaptable, so check this guide out today and use it to create a sustainable strategy, (or a green game-plan), that works for you! This also provides a great opportunity for collaboration with your chapter, your school, and your community on sustainable and resilient initiatives- maybe even the potential for FBD community involvement!
The AIAS can also look forward to this guide being revisited and strengthened by the 2020-2021 Sustainability and Resiliency Task Force. The Best Practices Guide on Sustainability will be re-released and revamped near the next Grassroots, so stay tuned and reach out to the Task Force if you want a certain topic to be included!
Please direct questions on the guide to Northeast Quad Director, Shannon DeFranza at firstname.lastname@example.org. As the designer and editor of the guide, she would be happy to discuss the guide more in depth with any member that would like to!!