Careers in Sustainability – Why Your Passion Can Be Your Life’s Work

Exciting Times! There Are Plenty of Careers in Sustainability Now

This is a Guest Post by C. N. Moore

For those of us who are hungry for society to embrace ecofriendly priorities, we live in exciting times. It can often feel that we, as a cultural whole, don’t care about the environment. However, despite what is a routinely discouraging flow of news, societies are eager for sustainability professionals to lead the way to a future that is green.

If you have a desire to contribute to the health of the planet and to the cultures that will inevitably promote it, your passion can be translated into a number of careers in sustainability that will allow you to transition from bystander to leader.  Read on to find out how.

What are your interests and skills?

The very fact that you are here, reading this EcoFriendlyLink blog, means that you’re an engaged participant in the world around you; it means that you have a focused set of interests that set you apart from the rest of the world. Those interests, when combined with passion, are what often become the driving force for world-changers.

If you’re worried that you will be unable to find the right niche within the sustainability culture to fit you, rest easy. It is becoming increasingly feasible to translate a wide variety of skills into specific fields and careers in sustainability.

When Mary Mazzoni from Triple Pundit covered the Business for Social Responsibility Conference last year she noted, “…they kept coming back to a broader topic: the rise of the sustainability professional.”

As you think about the possibility of translating your green interests into a green career, consider either your current professional skillset or the professional direction you’d most like to go. You’ll be surprised by how transferable the marriage of your skills and interests are into an eco-minded field.

Are there needs?

If you’ve let some of the trends you’ve seen around you influence the way you feel about the marketability of careers in sustainability, take heart. Katie Kross, a sustainability career expert says that as the field grows, the options do as well.

“Intuitively, I think this makes sense. When sustainability was a new discipline, teams were small and there was a need for generalists. But as corporations have started to grow their sustainability teams (some of them now have more than 100 people in their sustainability departments), it makes sense that we will see increasing specialization,” she notes.

This theme is echoed throughout multiple industries–everything from construction to social work has been marked by the need for professionals in sustainability.

When Washington State University surveyed the five best industries for entrepreneurship they found, “…the current demand in construction is bright green. As the negative effects of depleting resources and increased pollution become apparent, green building is more in demand than ever. Sustainability and energy efficiency are where to invest effort, and these are still developing fields with lots of options.”

Similarly, in 2010 the Council on Social Work Education claimed that the social justice issue of the century is sustainability. That means that we collectively do understand that the health (or lack of) of the environment is directly related to the health and the well-being of the people who call it home.

Can you make a difference?

This is the crucial question: whether or not you believe you can make a difference will likely act as the single largest factor that will impact whether or not you believe pursuing careers in sustainability will be worthwhile. It is just as important to recognize that you have valuable assets, as it is to recognize that utilizing those assets will have tangible results.

It’s easy to see the discouraging news when we read the paper, turn the TV on, or simply view what our friends are posting on social media. But if we look a little closer we can also see that individuals are absolutely impacting the field of sustainability in a variety of ways.

Inspiration – Ron Harwood

Streetlights are often the largest or second-largest drain on a municipality’s budget. Streetlights (often tens of thousands of them spread throughout the entire footprint of a city), represent an impressively large drain on city budgets.

Ron Harwood created the solution. He took his background in music and tech lighting to design Intellistreets. As Wired noted in its survey of the lights, “Defining Intellistreets as lighting is like saying that Apple is a computer company.”

This smart street lighting has a list of features that goes on and on, and includes: dimming its LED bulbs during non-peak hours, charging electric cars, providing wifi hotspots and even monitoring the environment in real time. 

Inspiration – Dr. Vandana Shiva

Or consider Dr. Vandana Shiva, an Indian author, activist, pioneer, scientific advisor, and mother. She founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in Dehra Dun, which is, “dedicated to high quality and independent research to address the most significant ecological and social issues of our times, working in close partnership with local communities and social movements.”

Dr. Shiva also founded Navdanya, which is “A national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources – especially native seed – and to promote organic farming and fair trade.”

You CAN Make A Difference!

The above are just two in a sea of examples that prove that even if you’re just one person, if you’re one person with a vision and a willingness to work hard – you can alter the future of the environment and countless individuals.

If they can do it, so can you.

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Do you have a career in sustainability? Would you like to? Let me know in the comments below.

Warm regards,

P.S.  Don’t forget to download your free green living handbook “Live Well, Live Green” here.

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