Start where you are

Someone recently asked me how I got started working in climate.

My answer wasn’t original, as I’ve seen it trumpeted everywhere for several years:

“Start where you are.”

In my creative and marketing career, I saw a lot of waste produced from my work, and a lot of awful companies who my employers happily hired (some were truly horrible). I had no interest in using my skills, time, and brain space to help them grow, so I started standing against it.

One of the first things I did was connect with greener printing suppliers (a lot of my work was printed marketing material). There were several across Australia, I just had to find them.

If you’re a marketer, plumber, architect, musician, accountant, developer, data scientist, taxi driver, or literally whatever – there are lots of things you can do to be climate conscious, even starting today.

I’d say a good first step though, before taking any action, is immersion. There’s a lot of bad news, and a lot of fear—not all intentional, but when you start seeing it, it can be really hard to see beyond it.

Let yourself soak in it for a while, and you’ll soon see there is a lot of awesome beyond it.

Some Goo-jitsu will help: search for “climate conscious architect” or “sustainable architect” (replace architect with your thing) and see what others are doing for some inspiration… you might be surprised at how many others there are.