Sustainability

AASHE empowers higher education faculty, administrators, staff and students to be effective change agents and drivers of sustainability innovation. AASHE enables members to translate information into action by offering essential resources and professional development to a diverse, engaged community of sustainability leaders.

The Higher Education Sustainability Initiative (HESI), launched in the lead-up to the Rio+20 Conference in 2012 as an open partnership between several United Nations entities and the higher education community, aims to enhance the role of the higher education sector in advancing sustainable development by facilitating multi-stakeholder discussions, actions, and the dissemination of best practices.

The toolkits in this series provides higher education faculty curated access to resources and processes, organized to aid in teaching about and engaging students in the concepts of sustainability including: green building, LEED, and sustainable land design and development. The materials can be adapted and scaled to fit a variety of class topics, degree programs, and student learning levels.

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) equips learners across all disciplines with the knowledge, skills, attributes and values required to pursue sustainable visions of the future. Using active pedagogies learners are supported in addressing complex or 'wicked problems' and identifying how they can contribute to solutions that address environmental integrity, social justice and economic prosperity.

Sustainability was adopted as one of ALA's Core Values of Librarianship by ALA Council in 2019, based on the 2018 recommendations of the ALA Special Task Force on Sustainability. This guide highlights activities from the American Library Association that focus on sustainability as a core value of librarianship and resources on sustainability including a bibliography of recent titles and online resources.

The mission of the organization is to provide resources for the library community to support sustainability through curriculum development; collections; exhibits; events; advocacy, communication, library buildings and space design. SustainRT is open to all ALA members and will include both individual members and organizational members.

The Sustainable Libraries Initiative (SLI) provides library leaders with a proven path forward to co-create libraries and communities that will thrive in the coming years. The Sustainable Library Certification Program and the SLI community of practice focuses your leadership to enable your library, and ultimately your community, to become more environmentally sound, socially equitable and economically feasible.

IFLA’s Environment, Sustainability and Libraries Section (ENSULIB) aim is to encourage librarians to inspire their communities into more environmentally sustainable way of action, by providing materials on green librarianship, giving voice to green librarians and library projects worldwide, leading by example, and offering a discussion forum.