ava's blog

frustration about environmental activism at work

My employer is working on monitoring and systematically improving its environmental impact since a little over a year now. I'm in the working group for this, and I'm also one of the two people who sign off on everything before it gets to the president. We've slowly built up an environmental management system with the help of our environmental manager and we're working towards an EMAS certification. We're now in the last two steps: preparing an environmental statement, getting the environmental management system verified and the environmental statement validated by an environmental verifier (an audit, basically).

For all this, we had to work through a ton of Excel sheets to measure how we were doing in the beginning, what the goals are, and how the improvements can be measured. We also gathered ideas from our group as well as the rest of the employees (1000+) how to make our workplace more environmentally friendly. Some of the ideas:

I'm currently at a low point in regard to all this for the following reasons:

The building isn't owned by the employer, it's rented. Any changes to the building or its outdoor surroundings need to be approved by the building management, and they're taking their sweet time. They also refuse to send anyone to join our meetings. Very quick and easy to do things employees would probably even do out of their own pocket get stalled this way. Similarly, cleaning and food is outsourced to external companies, so the control over how they clean, with what and how much vegan food there is at the cafeteria is almost completely out of our hands. Of course there is a degree of being able to customize what we get, but in the end, they're their own companies who are forced to act in a profitable way over complying with customer demands.

Also, you have the usual bureaucracy - which items, how much does it cost, from which supplier, can we get it cheaper somewhere, does it have to go over our official procurement department? Who will actually put it up, who will take care of it? What windows are affected? We need to ask people for numbers - how much water are we currently using is one thing, but we had to go find out how many dead birds are lying around?! We need to ask a lot of different people to decide where the optimal spot for a flower bed or nesting box is, and it all has to be done officially, with lots of paper and responsibilities, and as usual it can take weeks until all the people have responded and taken action. It blocks the entire momentum of that stuff and it leads to a lot of long discussions over nothing. Some things, like building a new bike shed, already take time on their own without all this added on top.

Due to a ton of work in Excel sheets to make everything measurable as required, and a lot of bikeshedding, and being blocked by almost everything either being not in our power/possession or needing a lot of bureaucracy, we have exactly one thing to show for right now in those, like, 1.5 years:

We made the employees add "Think before you print." to their e-mail signatures. Wow! I was already unimpressed when it was first brought up, and then I was out sick and they passed it in my absence. I'm sorry, but adding words to signatures is not a win. It is meaningless, it is low hanging fruit, it does nothing. People who want a printed out copy of emails (the fossils at our place) will still do so because they say they have to mark stuff up or need it for reading, and the others won't. No one thinks twice. I have seen that signature add-on 15 years ago and here we are. I want to get shit done that is effective, not a "nice to have, might do nothing but who knows, it can't hurt" thing.

I'm also pissed that our team doesn't lead by example - I was the only one bringing my work laptop to meetings, repeatedly, even after I explained to the others why I do it and how they can do it too. They still treat their laptops as stuck to the desk. That meant every Excel sheet and other stuff had to be printed out for the clowns who didn't bring their laptops. For 10 meetings now! These people do not think before they print, and they're the ones who came up with the signature bullshit. It's like I'm the only one taking this seriously, and the others do some kind of environmentalism roleplaying.

We don't even lead by example in food! The working group decided to do a meet&greet in the foyer with food and drink so people could stop by in their lunch break, talk, tell us their ideas, and write some notes with their feedback to put on a wall. I was, again, sick for most of that planning but I did attend the meet&greet. So I go there and one food item of like 10+ is vegan. There wasn't even plant based milk for the beverages. Internally, I was pissed - not everything needs to be vegan but it should be a large part as to not undermine our whole mission. I know these people can do better! Many of them do care to live these principles in private; not flying, driving EVs, being vegetarian, reducing plastic waste, being in environmental groups in their city, one of them is specifically active in bird protection. They weren't selected, they had to apply for being in this group. I know they aren't just there to get that damn certificate for our employer, they are passionate when they want to be. So why aren't they? It's something I brought up that needs to change for the next meet&greet. The people stopping by even validated this for another reason - most were turned off by all the cake and would have liked to just have apples, bananas, and more fruit and vegetables to snack.

I thought about exiting, honestly. It feels like we're making no impact, and I'm tired. But evidently, when I'm not there, it gets even worse.

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Published 15 Jan, 2025

#2025 #misc