A Brief Guide to the Roadmap Website

The Roadmap is designed to help health care organizations map their journey on the road to sustainability and is organized from general information on relevant topics to specific measures for improving your facility's performance. The information available under the Roadmap's tabs, from left to right (general to specific), is described below:

Topics—An overview of topic areas, including building design and construction, energy and emissions, water and effluent, and materials and waste. Each section includes information such as the following:

• Why the issue is important for health care
• Opportunities to improve sustainability performance measures in terms of environmental and financial performance and staff, patient, and community satisfaction
• Compliance and risk considerations
• Overview of target setting and action planning (details under Strategies)
• Overview of relevant resources (details under Resources)

Drivers—Considerations to think about when developing a sustainability program

• What are the drivers motivating your organization to action? Understanding your organization’s unique drivers will help you identify the solutions that best satisfy them.
• What are the potential barriers to action in your organization? As you plan your program, it is important to understand any barriers you may face so you can anticipate and overcome them.
• Is your organization ready to institutionalize a culture of sustainability in which actions become second nature—the way you do business or provide care? This section includes some discussion on the critical role of executive leadership.
• What resources are available to get the job done? Successful programs require dedicated resources to achieve your sustainability goals – environmental excellence, financial viability (or better), and broad community participation and satisfaction.

Strategies—A guide and set of tools for strategic planning

• Identifying a baseline will help you determine your starting point, which will improve your ability to  assess where you’re going.
• Target-setting tools help you set your goals by choosing a basic, intermediate, or advanced path that is right for your organization.
• A Top 10+ list for each topic area suggests projects that have been proven to improve performance and are relatively easy to implement.
• The Consumer Guide provides information on existing sustainability programs to help you choose which will be the most useful tool for your organization (e.g., LEED, GreenGlobes, Green Guide for Healthcare).

Implementation—A clearinghouse of strategies to help you develop your action plans. Information includes case studies and how-to guides to help guide you through the implementation and management of sustainability projects.

Resources—The Roadmap library