What do you love about being a sustainability professional?

We spent last year, recapping the ‘struggles’ that are common for many working in the sustainability sector and… now we’re going to share the highs from our interviews with 28 sustainability professionals.

Because, even when it’s a hard, there is a lot to celebrate in this community!

I, for one, love how passionate folks are! I’m quite an energetic, over-the-top (some even have called me ‘loud American’) when it comes to topics like biodiversity, life cycle assessments and litter picking. And, isn’t it a delight when you meet others who are dorky about the same things?

So, here’s the first sharing of what people love about working in this sector.

We’re starting off with a fun one.

Yes, it’s hard to work in sustainability.

But what if that’s the attraction?

Are you someone who would be bored if you were doing a repetitive, easy task?

That’s what we heard from Pat, a Sustainability Manager in a multinational corporation.

“I love the hardness of it. I love the challenge. These are hard problems,” Pat said, “it feels really exciting to be able to change systems from the inside.”

Pat, like a few of our interviewees, works in what may be considered by some a questionable ally or ‘bad actor’ when it comes to sustainability (i.e., fossil fuel companies, ministry of defence, automobile or aerospace industry, we could go on…).

In fact, this was one of Pat’s ruminations that from a “philosophical personal perspective, if I don’t make any changes then all I’m doing is getting paid by things that I don’t agree with.”

Yet, Pat said this was what they love about working in a corporation on sustainability - the challenge. Fair enough, Pat had some big wins early on changing policies and introducing new practices, and if you've been in an organisation where you don't feel like you're making progress then that might be a different story.

As we’ve previously documented we know sometimes the challenge of pushback, unsupportive managers, budget cuts and headlines can make it hard to keep wanting to work as a sustainability professional – you can see the recording and resources from our interviews here as well as our articles in IEMA’s Transform Magazine and edie – but at times, the challenge of brokering complex stakeholder engagements and finding loopholes in policies to get people ‘doing the right thing’… that can be pretty fun!

What do you love about working in sustainability?

Is the challenge of this sector actually something you enjoy at times?