Filip works in retail. He has a business management educational background. He has worked as a sustainability professional for more than ten years and is in his early forties.
“I am frustrated. We do not need more thinking or ideas, we need implementation!”
Filip had done everything expected of him. He had a business management university degree and a decent job. Still, he felt that something was wrong. Sitting at his office desk he asked himself “Is this the rest of my life?” Not wanting the answer to be “yes”, he resigned and became a traveler instead. And through his many travels his environmental awareness started to grow. “When you travel and experience the world it is easy to fall in love with the planet,” Filip recalls.
Many years later, Filip has a job that he truly believes contributes to sustainability. Or, he does not want to use the word “sustainability”. “Corporations have stolen that word for shitty reasons, it does not mean much anymore,” he says. Filip leads an e-commerce retail company of which “both the physical system infrastructure and the business model are circular”. “Disposable containers are massively used today, and one reason such a system can continue is that recycling is the golden answer. But global plastic recycling works very poorly today”. Filip wants to change that and contribute to a better world with tangible impact, and has a lot of faith in what he is currently doing: proving the business case of an idea that could mean real system change.
In the past, Filip worked for many years as a management consultant. He worked with CEOs of large businesses and developed new business models that were “sustainable by design”. He felt that the work was meaningful. “I could see that we changed a lot of business leaders personally, at least that was my impression,” Filip says. But a lot of the ideas he came up with were never implemented. Filip wanted to be the doer.
“Doer” is Filip’s keyword. When I ask him how sustainability professionals can have the most impact possible, he highlights the force of “the doers”. “I am frustrated. We do not need more thinking or ideas, we need implementation!” Filip believes that sustainability professionals must focus much more on what should be done than what should be avoided. “Sustainability professionals should be more experienced in business management. We should not be personnel that add cost to a company. If we want to be taken more seriously, we should be the part of the balance sheet that is generating revenue”. When it comes to which type of workplace or sector a sustainability professional should work in for maximal impact, Filip answers “Commercial business settings. At least if the sustainability professional wants to accomplish things fast.”
However, Filip does not believe commercial settings are the place to be per default. “Sustainability professionals should work in companies that take sustainability seriously. Offering competence to non-progressive employers means that the sustainability professionals contribute to an extended license to operate. That the company can do shitty things for a longer period of time.” I ask Filip how I can know whether a company is serious or not. Filip suggest to “follow he money”, to investigate what the company invests in. Another suggestion is to look at the company performance indicators (“number of likes on a green marketing post” is not serious).
Filip believes that “we are almost at a point where it does not make sense for sustainability professionals to look for jobs with the word ‘sustainability’ in the role”. He sees such role names as a symptom of the immaturity of the company. “Sustainability should be engrained, not a siloed thing.”
Filip has a lot of faith in that existing businesses can change focus and course and be part of the future solution, while the existing economic paradigm is maintained. He also believes we already have all the ideas, philosophies, technologies, databases, tools, and resources to prevent devastating global warming levels. But he does not think we have the will. Yet. “We will get deeper and deeper into the shit, but one day we will wake up to reality. We have to hurt before we choose to do something about it.”
Meaningful sustainability jobs 