POLICY & PUBLICATIONS
For the past decade, Georgia Tech has been a leader in embracing Sustainability initiatives across our campus. Sustainability is written into our Institute’s Mission Statement, Strategic Plan, Campus Master Plan and Landscape Master Plan. Additionally, Georgia Tech recently signed the President’s Climate Commitment to further support integrated sustainable design ideologies and to further commit Georgia Tech as a leader in our community and the higher education marketplace.
Sustainability refers to the ways that we, as individuals and as a campus community, can use natural resources so that our current and future needs for those resources can be provided for. Moreover, a sustainable campus must also include recognition of our academic mission as a state university, and an appreciation that our organization must be financially viable within the budget realities of Georgia and the University System of Georgia. Thus, sustainability can be viewed as a triad of interrelated forces that must become mutually supportive.
The Campus Master Plan from 1997 links Georgia Tech's Strategic Plan, Mission Statement and the Master Plan for a living, sustainable campus. The 2004 Campus Master Plan Update focused on specific elements of Sustainability, Accessibility, the ground plane, collaborative planning with community constituencies and carrying capacity for new facilities. It specifies these Key Sustainability Goals: Reduced hydrocarbon Emissions, Reduced Material Consumption, Reduced Water Consumption, Reduced Storm Water Runoff.
Georgia Tech's College of Management building in the Tech Square portion of Georgia Tech's campus was the 13th LEED certified building in the U.S. In its opening day ceremony, President Clough stated: "Sustainable buildings become symbolic of international education, world citizens, working in a global econmy, and across a sustainable world".
