Whether you’ve known us for a while, or this is your first time learning about HUSARCH, you may have picked up that we’re not your traditional architecture firm. Most architect firms strive to design high-concept buildings, while we enjoy designing trash collection systems – one of the ways we spent our 4th annual Earth Day celebration!

At HUSARCH, sustainability isn’t a side project–it’s integrated into our work, our values, and our workplace. While our primary focus is on sustainable integrations for our clients, Earth Day is our opportunity to turn the focus inward.

Each year we take a day of service in honor of Earth Day where we develop a working plan of internal initiatives and goals we want to study and accomplish in the following year. Past highlights include:

Establishing office Battery Recycling Program - we finally filled our first bucket!

Challenging every staff member to complete EPA Construction General Permit certification to address Stormwater Pollution Prevention - we’ve now built this into our team onboarding process
Using our building as a laboratory: We’ve performed Water testing, Air Quality Testing, and established baseline models of our office to better understand our most familiar property.
Through our day of service, we established a community volunteering practice. We’ve consistently sent two participants every month to the Pilsen Food Pantry this last year and we look forward to continuing this tradition with a new non-profit each year. This year we’ll be exploring a new partnership with El Valor, a local organization supporting family integration and education in Pilsen. Volunteering is a cornerstone of our sustainability practice because creating equitable, sustainable communities starts with care.

We have established a familiar rhythm to our days of service over the past four years. We start the day with a working session where we review our annual submission to the AIA 2030 Design Data Exchange (DDx) Reporting and look back on what we accomplished this past year. We submitted a total of 16 projects with 889,628 GSF included in the analysis.

We then look ahead to the coming year to establish our internal goals. This year we had the team present ‘Shark Tank’ style and pitch what they’d individually like to see our office working on - the ideas were so inspiring! We quickly brainstormed how the various projects could work together and we developed three key working areas for the coming year:

Internal monitoring: Building upon our Office as Laboratory concept, we plan to further assess our office and working conditions by:

Quarterly tracking of our office Energy Use Intensity (EUI): With this data, we will lower our gas intake to improve EUI overtime, laying the groundwork for smarter utility use each year.
Monthly Eco-Footprint monitoring: We have established personal baselines of our eco-footprint and will have a reward for the individual who shows the greatest personal improvement over the year. Calculate your own Eco Footprint here: The Nature Conservancy & EPA’s Carbon Footprint Calculator
Working to establish Zero-Waste Kitchen Goals: We committed to upgrading our kitchen practices to minimize waste, starting with tracking snacks we offer and finding alternatives with more eco-friendly packaging and introducing a composting service.

Community Engagement: HUSARCH has been working to host a Pilsen Energy Fair in 2026 and we developed a working group that will focus on building a demonstration of entry level energy savings - think Museum of Science and Industry exhibit for kids on how a heat pump works.
Outreach: Finally we will work on figuring out how to better communicate these goals and missions with our community. Part of that is inherent in this blog post, but we’re excited to make it local with production of an energy efficiency ‘zine that can promote savings ideas that inspire our Pilsen neighbors to take action in their own homes and businesses. We’re excited to use our location at two prominent Chicago bus lines to survey and connect with our neighbors.

Finally, we end our day of service with a little physical labor. Our annual trash pick up collected 42.64 lbs of trash from around our block in just 20 minutes! In years past we aimed to beautify our lot with building planter boxes and seeding flowers; this year we focused on building a prototype trash collector.

Our lawn at the corner of Halsted and Cermak is a hotbed for trash movement. We are regularly able to see how the wind moves trash through our neighborhood on this little plot. We wanted to study if there are ways we can catch the trash to reduce the overall waste on our streets. Our team designed a soccer goal like contraption that will ideally scoop and retain the trash for collection rather than just becoming someone else’s problem. We then built three prototypes that we positioned around the site and we’ll monitor which placements are the most effective over the year.

While Earth Day is a moment of reflection, the work continues year round. We’ve realized real transformation happens in small, consistent steps. Whether that is collecting data, volunteering our time, or imagining new systems to reduce waste and improve wellness.

We’re proud of what we’ve started and even more excited about what’s ahead!

If you have any suggestions for how we can incorporate sustainability into our practice or community, we would love to hear from you! info@husarchitecture.com

Embodying Sustainable Potential: HUSARCH’s 4th Annual Earth Day