Products & procurement are aligned with emissions reductions targets
October 5, 2022 10:15 AM Subscribe
Every job can be a climate job. Asking your employer for any type of change—from new coffee makers to comprehensive action on climate—can be intimidating, especially when the request targets something core and systemic to the business, and may not be supported
by leadership. But there are tangible, collaborative ways to harness your employee influence and spark climate action at any company (Drawdown Labs report link).
I'd still like to read a discussion on ways people are bring climate change changes to their jobs and communities, any job.
The pandemic gave my community the opportunity to pivot from an annual in-person conference to an annual virtual conference. This has the added benefit of meaning that we get attendees from more places, and people who otherwise would not be able to attend (due to climate change values which are common in the community, due to travel costs, etc.) are finally able to participate. It has also given me something meaningful to work on while doing the social distancing pandemic thing. In the past, it has mostly been a North America event led by a group in a single place which everyone then traveled to. This year, our planning team is made up of 1-2 each from: Chile, Mexico, US, and Canada. So we are getting a more international experience while also keeping our travel footprints low.
posted by aniola at 11:19 AM on October 5, 2022 [14 favorites]
The pandemic gave my community the opportunity to pivot from an annual in-person conference to an annual virtual conference. This has the added benefit of meaning that we get attendees from more places, and people who otherwise would not be able to attend (due to climate change values which are common in the community, due to travel costs, etc.) are finally able to participate. It has also given me something meaningful to work on while doing the social distancing pandemic thing. In the past, it has mostly been a North America event led by a group in a single place which everyone then traveled to. This year, our planning team is made up of 1-2 each from: Chile, Mexico, US, and Canada. So we are getting a more international experience while also keeping our travel footprints low.
posted by aniola at 11:19 AM on October 5, 2022 [14 favorites]
Oh I guess since this is about how to do it, I should add how it happened. In 2020 there was no in-person conference. In 2021 I sent an email out to the group asking them to fill out a short survey to see if they wanted there to be a 2021 virtual event. A handful of people responded, and response was positive. From there it was just the standard hard work and "can we really make this happen/keep this going" that you get with anything hard.
So basically I saw a vacuum and we filled it. Look for the vacuums.
posted by aniola at 11:29 AM on October 5, 2022 [3 favorites]
So basically I saw a vacuum and we filled it. Look for the vacuums.
posted by aniola at 11:29 AM on October 5, 2022 [3 favorites]
Harness your collective voice and that of your colleagues to keep leaders on the right track, pushing them to rethink the company’s mission, vision, and value propositions.
In a world where most employees can't even unionize without suffering dire consequences, the guide feels... wildly inappropriate.
posted by simmering octagon at 12:14 PM on October 5, 2022 [8 favorites]
In a world where most employees can't even unionize without suffering dire consequences, the guide feels... wildly inappropriate.
posted by simmering octagon at 12:14 PM on October 5, 2022 [8 favorites]
That's important, and frustrating and wrong. But also everyone can do something, and I believe everyone is working on something they believe is important and needed. It may not be climate change! But everything is interrelated. I'd love to hear more from people on what works for them. What are you, dear reader, doing to make this be the world you want to live in?
posted by aniola at 1:58 PM on October 5, 2022
posted by aniola at 1:58 PM on October 5, 2022
simmering octagon's point is very well taken.
I suspect that the audience for this are white collar employees in the tech sector, the financial sector, consulting etc etc, in other words, the people who have much more (relative) security in their jobs and much more social/economic status to fall back on.
I was thinking, as to aniola's question, that as faculty/staff in an university, there is a lot more I could be doing, either via my union (yay for having one! not all higher ed institutions do!) or my department, or via my academic association (like pushing for more virtual meetings).
posted by spamandkimchi at 3:32 PM on October 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
I suspect that the audience for this are white collar employees in the tech sector, the financial sector, consulting etc etc, in other words, the people who have much more (relative) security in their jobs and much more social/economic status to fall back on.
I was thinking, as to aniola's question, that as faculty/staff in an university, there is a lot more I could be doing, either via my union (yay for having one! not all higher ed institutions do!) or my department, or via my academic association (like pushing for more virtual meetings).
posted by spamandkimchi at 3:32 PM on October 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
I was actually thinking earlier today, as I scribbled something on the request-office-supply-purchase list, that the (necessary, especially for mask-wearing instructors) lavaliere mics in our classrooms go through 9v batteries like a hot knife through butter, and maybe rechargeables would be a good idea?
I mean. It's penny-ante. But sometimes that's the low-hanging fruit.
posted by humbug at 4:39 PM on October 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
I mean. It's penny-ante. But sometimes that's the low-hanging fruit.
posted by humbug at 4:39 PM on October 5, 2022 [2 favorites]
Academics should end conferences being publication venues, by doing publication assessment using only journal publications. At least some fields like mathematics wind up only counting journals already, but computer science remains ass backwards, using primarily conferences.
At this point, I suggest heavy handed measures like legally requiring that in faculty applications universities should only accept vitae without conference publications or contributed talks listed.
As an aside, I brought up climate change briefly during a cryptography talk I gave recently, as ring VRFs work great for building anonymous ration card systems.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:07 AM on October 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
At this point, I suggest heavy handed measures like legally requiring that in faculty applications universities should only accept vitae without conference publications or contributed talks listed.
As an aside, I brought up climate change briefly during a cryptography talk I gave recently, as ring VRFs work great for building anonymous ration card systems.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:07 AM on October 6, 2022 [2 favorites]
I work for a small UK charity that's always worked remotely, and these days does some climate focused work, so there's a lot of caveats here about how well this would work in a larger org but here's some stuff we did. Firstly, I should say we had full support for this from management and our trustees so we were largely pushing against an open door, which helps. I've linked to some our our blog posts/pages on our site which is hopefully ok :)
The first step was organising a group to look at all this and make proposals. They did some obvious stuff like trying to work out our emissions by e.g. using expense claims to estimate travel emissions as well as asking suppliers about emissions. The main conclusion there was that flying was the main source of emissions (we do some international work so there was a chunk of long haul flights). We did introduce a "no flying unless the journey is more than n hours" travel policy. Relatedly we introduced extra holiday if you were using public transport (basically trains) to get somewhere instead of flying. It's capped but it's a way to encourage people to cut emissions outside work.
Other things introduced:
* looking at emissions when we buy stuff, and at the very least asking for emissions reports/policy from suppliers, as much to normalise it.
* Requesting vegetarian only catering when we have staff meet-ups.
* Committing to running all our events as hybrid - i.e. no in person only events. This is also has accessibility benefits.
We've had a lot of back and forth about offsets and the conclusion is "sigh, it is complicated and hard to assess offset schemes". We've done our best to pick a good one but the more you read about it the more obvious it is offsetting is something of a sticking plaster.
Lastly, we're trying to talk about this in public so other organisations can see what we're doing.
posted by mr_stru at 4:12 AM on October 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
The first step was organising a group to look at all this and make proposals. They did some obvious stuff like trying to work out our emissions by e.g. using expense claims to estimate travel emissions as well as asking suppliers about emissions. The main conclusion there was that flying was the main source of emissions (we do some international work so there was a chunk of long haul flights). We did introduce a "no flying unless the journey is more than n hours" travel policy. Relatedly we introduced extra holiday if you were using public transport (basically trains) to get somewhere instead of flying. It's capped but it's a way to encourage people to cut emissions outside work.
Other things introduced:
* looking at emissions when we buy stuff, and at the very least asking for emissions reports/policy from suppliers, as much to normalise it.
* Requesting vegetarian only catering when we have staff meet-ups.
* Committing to running all our events as hybrid - i.e. no in person only events. This is also has accessibility benefits.
We've had a lot of back and forth about offsets and the conclusion is "sigh, it is complicated and hard to assess offset schemes". We've done our best to pick a good one but the more you read about it the more obvious it is offsetting is something of a sticking plaster.
Lastly, we're trying to talk about this in public so other organisations can see what we're doing.
posted by mr_stru at 4:12 AM on October 6, 2022 [4 favorites]
I am currently trying to draft a university travel policy document. It does seem like there is a hierarchy of options re carbon reduction, with less options depending on distance of the intended journey. I do think the banning shorter flights is a good policy, but limited due to us being UK and my location is especially peripheral, 5 hours on a train gets us to London at the furthest. I like the idea of having incentives for selecting lower carbon alternatives, not sure how much extra leave would work for us, since academics here tend not to use all they get anyway. But wonder whether there is potential for other incentives. I think a cap is a good idea, but I can imagine a lot of pushback. I was looking at some data which suggests that a relatively small fraction of academics at a Canadian institution (~10%) were responsible for 50% of the flying emissions, which if true elsewhere I suspect means that any changes will need to target that specific group to deliver anything useful, and I guess they might be tougher to persuade. Sometimes because trips are essential for a specific subset of researchers but there is also a bunch of perceptions about travel being essential to career is a mindset in some parts of academia, as well as the benefit in kind that it offers.
We are also having the offset debate about our wider carbon emissions. We looked at buying a local wood as a test case and the overall savings suggested we would have to buy a lot of land. We would likely be better off buying empty land and building solar PV farms.
One thing I think is key is differentiating between changing behaviour as opposed to changing policy on institutional operations. We're hoping for a community council to see what is supportable by the wider university stakeholder set. Procurement is a massive issue as you say. Going vegetarian has loads of potential but even basic policies have been getting a lot of pushback, so getting to no meat on campus seems a long way away.
I found this FREE open access kindle book on reducing academic flying this week (not sure if its free outside the UK).
posted by biffa at 4:53 AM on October 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
We are also having the offset debate about our wider carbon emissions. We looked at buying a local wood as a test case and the overall savings suggested we would have to buy a lot of land. We would likely be better off buying empty land and building solar PV farms.
One thing I think is key is differentiating between changing behaviour as opposed to changing policy on institutional operations. We're hoping for a community council to see what is supportable by the wider university stakeholder set. Procurement is a massive issue as you say. Going vegetarian has loads of potential but even basic policies have been getting a lot of pushback, so getting to no meat on campus seems a long way away.
I found this FREE open access kindle book on reducing academic flying this week (not sure if its free outside the UK).
posted by biffa at 4:53 AM on October 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
As a caveat, aviation is only 2.5% of CO2 emissions, so maybe work-from-home policies achieve more than limiting air travel.
There are other reasons for removing conference publications from faculty vitae evaluation. In particular, computer scientists should be most able to design and use innovative electronic journal designs, so them using conferences holds up everyone else doing anything better than current journals.
posted by jeffburdges at 5:24 AM on October 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
There are other reasons for removing conference publications from faculty vitae evaluation. In particular, computer scientists should be most able to design and use innovative electronic journal designs, so them using conferences holds up everyone else doing anything better than current journals.
posted by jeffburdges at 5:24 AM on October 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
Harness your collective voice and that of your colleagues to keep leaders on the right track, pushing them to rethink the company’s mission, vision, and value propositions.In a world where most employees can't even unionize without suffering dire consequences, the guide feels... wildly inappropriate.
It's good to be sensitive to the differing levels of worker power, and to the potential consequences for trying to take collective action on climate change in the workplace.
What do you think will happen to the workers who cannot unionize without suffering dire consequences when the planet heats up another 2C? Or when they are laid off because the job they have can't exist in the place where they live anymore due to any number of the myriad effects of climate change?
This is a guide from Project Drawdown that aims to encourage people to take action within their current role to impact the climate crisis. Just because not everyone has the privilege to do that doesn't make the guide's existence inappropriate.
We really have to get better at talking about this stuff, and we have to get more nuanced when we talk about climate justice.
Here are some more targeted guides recently released by Project Drawdown: Job Function Action Guides. The job categories described here probably also hint at the target demo that these are aimed at -- it's not disempowered agricultural workers in the Global South that are being asked to do more here.
posted by lazaruslong at 7:23 AM on October 6, 2022
As a caveat, aviation is only 2.5% of CO2 emissions, so maybe work-from-home policies achieve more than limiting air travel.
Sure, but they are a lot more of my organisation's emissions and our strategy has to consider that. Getting to work policy is also on our agenda.
posted by biffa at 8:58 AM on October 6, 2022
Sure, but they are a lot more of my organisation's emissions and our strategy has to consider that. Getting to work policy is also on our agenda.
posted by biffa at 8:58 AM on October 6, 2022
I am a motor minimalist. I don't ride in planes, trains, buses, or cars. (Yes I am aware I still participate in a motor-centered society.)
I can't tell you how many jobs I haven't applied for because it needlessly said "you must have a driver's license". These job descriptions are limited by the imaginations of their writers.
Craigslist ads say "you must have a truck" and since they're not going to be interviewing me and checking to make sure I have a driver's license, I can just show up with my bikes-at-work trailer and haul off things that literally even cars can't haul.
For example, one of my dream jobs is mail carrying. Does every mail carrier who works at the post office even USE their driver's license? No! A lot of them walk around downtown all day with these cute hand-pushed wheely mail carts. For some of the carriers who are further out, there's boxes where a single driver drops off their mail and the carrier pick up the mail and keeps delivering. This is literally a solved problem even for existing mail carriers within the existing system! Does USPS really need to require a driver's license for all mail carrying positions? No! Could I do that with a bike-at-work trailer and maybe a solar e-assist? Yes, absolutely.
My point is, if anyone reading this is writing job descriptions, keep this sort of thing in mind. And if you need help seeing the possibilities, get in touch.
posted by aniola at 10:14 AM on October 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
I can't tell you how many jobs I haven't applied for because it needlessly said "you must have a driver's license". These job descriptions are limited by the imaginations of their writers.
Craigslist ads say "you must have a truck" and since they're not going to be interviewing me and checking to make sure I have a driver's license, I can just show up with my bikes-at-work trailer and haul off things that literally even cars can't haul.
For example, one of my dream jobs is mail carrying. Does every mail carrier who works at the post office even USE their driver's license? No! A lot of them walk around downtown all day with these cute hand-pushed wheely mail carts. For some of the carriers who are further out, there's boxes where a single driver drops off their mail and the carrier pick up the mail and keeps delivering. This is literally a solved problem even for existing mail carriers within the existing system! Does USPS really need to require a driver's license for all mail carrying positions? No! Could I do that with a bike-at-work trailer and maybe a solar e-assist? Yes, absolutely.
My point is, if anyone reading this is writing job descriptions, keep this sort of thing in mind. And if you need help seeing the possibilities, get in touch.
posted by aniola at 10:14 AM on October 6, 2022 [1 favorite]
I am delighted by your eponysterical favorite to my comment, chariot pulled by cassowaries.
posted by aniola at 11:20 AM on October 7, 2022
posted by aniola at 11:20 AM on October 7, 2022
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posted by spamandkimchi at 10:16 AM on October 5, 2022