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Sustainability Resources

Sustainable Development - Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

(Brundtland Commission, United Nations 1987)

Sustainable communities seek to grow in ways that expand economic opportunity, protect public health and the environment, and create and enhance the places that people love.

These resources can help North Carolina's rural and urban areas to plan effectively for future growth and lessen the environmental impacts of development:

Green Communities – USEPA Smart Strategies for a Sustainable Future
The Green Communities Web site is your portal to tools and information on the best strategies, programs and policies to reduce your environmental footprint. A five-step environmental planning framework leads you to a greener, sustainable future. Green Communities toolkit is closely linked, for many communities, to the concept of smart growth. EPA's Smart Growth Web page describes smart growth as development that serves the economy, the community and the environment. It changes the terms of the development debate away from the traditional growth-no growth question to "how and where should new development be accommodated."

Smart Growth America is a coalition of national, state and local organizations working to improve the ways we plan and build the towns, cities and metro areas we call home. The coalition includes many of the best-known national organizations advocating on behalf of historic preservation, the environment, farmland and open space preservation, neighborhood revitalization and more.

The Low Impact Development Center is a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of Low Impact Development technology. Low Impact Development is a new, comprehensive land planning and engineering design approach with a goal of maintaining and enhancing the pre-development hydrologic regime of urban and developing watersheds.

N.C. Cooperative Extension / Watershed Education for Communities and Officials has developed resources to help citizens, developers and policy-makers have an informed discussion about the costs, benefits and trade-offs of LID in their community:

The U.S. Green Building Council is a non-profit community of leaders working to make green buildings available to everyone within a generation. Their programs include:

  • The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System is a voluntary, consensus-based national rating system for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings. LEED addresses all building types and emphasizes state-of-the-art strategies in five areas: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials and resources selection, and indoor environmental quality.
  • The Green Home Guide A green home incorporates smart design, technology, construction and maintenance elements to significantly lessen the negative impact of the home on the environment and improve the health of the people who live inside. The Web site is http://www. greenhomeguide.org/

The North Carolina Green Building Technology Database will help you find projects in North Carolina that have implemented specific green building techniques, strategies, or technologies."Green building" is sometimes referred to as "high performance building" or "sustainable building." It means that energy, water and materials are used efficiently during the construction and lifetime of the structure; the health and productivity of occupants is supported; and the impact of the structure on the local and global environment is minimized. This database is a collection of case studies, but it is organized in such a way that you can identify projects by any of about 140 techniques, strategies, and technologies related to green building. You can also identify projects by location, building type or site condition.

Mountain Ridge and Steep Slope Protection Strategies
The Land-of-Sky Regional council secured funding from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation and established an advisory committee to study the issue of development on steep slopes. This report includes strategies to promote safer and more responsible, sustainable development in mountainous areas.

N.C. League of Municipalities Green Challenge
The purpose of the NCLM Green Challenge is to encourage member cities and towns to implement short-term and long-range actions that will conserve resources and save money, thereby protecting the environment and operating municipal government in a more cost-effective, energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly manner. Participating cities and towns choose practical actions that can save energy, money and natural resources. These include adopting a sustainability plan or climate change resolution and creating an energy improvement plan.