Sustainability Merit Badge

Six of the nine requirements are choices

Requirements 2 to 6 each ask for one of three, and requirement 7 asks for two of six. On a flat list that is twenty-one parts, all looking equally required. In practice a Scout does seven of them.

Answer the questions at the top of this page and the plan drops the fourteen branches you are not taking. Leave them unanswered and the plan shows everything, with the branches marked as provisional. It will not quietly narrow the badge for somebody who has said nothing.

Two of the branches are measured in weeks

Requirement 3(c), reducing household food waste, asks you to establish a baseline and then track and record for two weeks. It is one of three food options and the only one with a clock. Pick it deliberately if you pick it, and pick it early.

Requirement 2(a) wants water bills from the past year, if they are available. That is a conversation with whoever keeps the household records, and it can take a while to get.

The campout is not optional, and it is not yours to schedule

Requirement 8(a) happens on a campout or other outdoor Scouting activity that you attend. Requirement 8 is "do the following", all three parts, so there is no way around it and no choice to answer.

That makes the unit's calendar the real length of this badge. Everything else here can be done at a desk in a fortnight; 8(a) waits for a trip. Look up when the next one is before you plan anything else, and go with the observation list already in hand: transportation, forestry, soil conservation, water resources, habitat, buildings, campsites and sanitation.

This badge and Environmental Science are not the same badge

Both are Eagle-required, both are conservation-shaped, and both are built almost entirely out of "do one of the following". They ask for different work. Environmental Science is field study and experiment; Sustainability is measurement of your own household and community, and it keeps returning to what you personally would change.

Earning one does not count towards the other, and there is a separate plan for Environmental Science on this site.

What this page is

The Sustainability merit badge, laid out so the choices are visible as choices. It is not a copy of the requirements: each step is a short label with a link to the official requirements, which are what actually governs and which change from year to year.