You dont have to be the boss to fight climate change
Transcriber: Thảo Vương Phương
Reviewer: David DeRuwe
On the third week of my new job,
I was presenting to a roomful
of people I had never met.
This was about a project
that could cost Atlas Professionals
hundreds of thousands of dollars,
but make them the first
oil and gas recruitment company
to become carbon neutral in Australia.
Oh, did I mention that everyone in this
room could control my professional future?
And then if I wanted this done,
it had to be done in six months.
People often say If you
follow your passion,
you’ll never work a day in your life,
and that might be true,
but what if work in your passion
doesn’t work out?
I’d love to run an animal rescue farm
as much as the next guy,
but at the end of the day,
we all need money to live.
So what then?
Would I be willing to compromise my
values to go to a job I don’t really like,
but it pays the bills,
so it’s good enough?
Could I even do that
for the next 50-plus years?
So there I was, on the third week
of my new job, given an opportunity,
the opportunity to use
my values, passions, and experience
to actually make a change
in the world and get paid for it.
For those who don’t know,
carbon neutrality is the process
whereby a company or groups of people
work out how much carbon they emit.
Then taking that number, they try
to reduce it to the point of net zero.
This is done through a series
of three steps:
the first being
calculating your footprint;
the second being reducing that
as much as feasibly possible
through your own company;
and finally,
you take the remainder that you have
and invest in carbon offsets.
These carbon offsets
are programs and projects
that people put forward
to offer solutions to carbon.
On the first week of my job,
Perth, Australia was in lockdown.
Who loved that?
So it meant that on the second week,
I thought I would be meeting people,
doing office inductions,
just getting a general lay of the land.
On Wednesday afternoon,
my boss came up to me and said,
“Within the fortnight,
I want you to present to the CEO
and senior management team
about the feasibility
of becoming carbon neutral.”
Honestly, I thought this was busy work.
I thought it was just something
to give the new employee to do
until they actually had time for me.
I assumed it would be a project
that the business would look at once,
decide it was too hard
or simply just not worth it.
And I assumed, based on my age
and the fact that no one
really knew who I was,
that they wouldn’t really
take my suggestions seriously.
With all these assumptions looming,
I also knew that if I did want them
to take this project and myself seriously,
I had to put the hard work in
and actually prove it to them.
Obviously, they did take me seriously;
otherwise, I wouldn’t be standing up here.
To their credit, they didn’t treat me
like I was just some naive little girl,
but instead they heard me out,
and questionably,
they’ve put me in charge of it.
So the senior management on board,
I then went to the employees.
I took all the information
that I had and presented to them,
knowing very well that if I couldn’t get
them on board with this,
implementing this change
would be 10 times harder.
Honestly, I was super happy
by how supportive people were,
and how excited they were for this change.
Most businesses have the ability
to make these changes
and the employees in them that are willing
to go with this change and support it,
but they often need the change
to be more convenient for them
and someone who’s actually
willing to lead it.
Even though I experienced
a lot of support,
I also experienced
my fair share of pushback,
as you’re always going to do.
For about a month, I went
back and forth with people who asked,
“Is this worth it? Are we actually
going to make a difference?”
One of the stumping questions
I received from one of our employees
was: “What is the tangible
effect in degrees Celsius
that this will change
the world every year?”
How the hell am I meant to answer that?
Honestly, it’s in a whole
different area to what I studied,
and it’s way above my pay grade,
but that’s OK.
At the end of the day,
you can’t give all the answers.
What’s most important is that you go back
and are willing to educate yourself
to put those ideas forward.
At the end of the day,
there’s only so much that we can do.
We can’t change the world
by one quick decision.
It’s going to take a long time to do that.
And employees, especially in businesses,
are just happy when people
are actually willing to hear them out,
give them a voice, and understand
what the issues are to them.
I couldn’t answer that question
from that employee, and I still can’t;
no matter how much I research,
I just can’t give that answer.
But that’s OK, because
I’m making an effort,
and honestly, I am very happy
that I can stand here
in front of you all on this red dot
and actually say that my program
and everything that I’m doing
in this project
is going to make
a difference in this world.
And I’m actually going to see those
tangible numbers that we all talk about.
At Atlas Professionals,
we specialize in putting highly-skilled
employees on boats and ships.
So our biggest carbon
footprint area is our flights.
This covers around 475 tons
of CO2 just in the year 2020,
which keep in mind was a COVID year.
So for us, that’s actually a small number
compared to what we are used to.
Even though we understand
this is our biggest footprint,
and this is the area
that we need to change,
at the moment, it’s the only feasible way
to get our employees to and from work.
So this new technology
coming forward, as we see every day,
at the moment, we can’t
make much of a change.
So instead, we’ve been
focusing on seemingly small areas
where we can make
a big difference, such as catering.
Now, catering might seem quite
straightforward to most of you. And it is.
So let me give you an example
of how we could make
an actual difference in this area.
Say we take a rig full of people -
let’s go a small one,
about 120 people on that rig -
and we gave them 180 grams of beef,
so a steak for dinner.
They would have emitted
1300 kg of CO2 just in that one meal.
Now if we change that -
we take the same
amount of people, 120 people,
and we give them
180 grams of chicken instead,
they would have only
consumed 151kg of CO2.
That’s a reduction, almost 88%,
just from swapping out that one meal.
So if we take that to the next level,
if we take a business
that provides beef to their employees
six out of seven days per week,
but then they reduced that down
to four out of seven days per week,
they could reduce
their annual emissions of CO2
by 75 tons per year per rig.
That is huge, and that’s on a small rig.
Though Atlas does have the ability
to make these changes,
you also do need to understand that
providing beef is someone’s livelihood.
At the end of the day,
this is someone’s job,
but if you want to make these
changes in your business,
you have to be the one
that makes these choices.
You need to take that into consideration,
as well as local food
produce availabilities,
the assessment of food chains,
the effect of that new produce
on the environment,
the employee nutritional needs,
and many, many more.
Basically, it’s a lot of work,
and it affects real people,
but if you want to make this change,
then you need to be willing
to make these tough decisions.
At Atlas, we knew we wanted
to make a difference.
We wanted to make choices
that actually mattered.
For many companies when they go down
the path of carbon neutrality,
they invest in offsets
just to get the problem out of their way.
Now, I’m not saying that offsets
are a bad thing; they’re definitely not.
But when done with the wrong intentions,
they can be a form
of greenwashing for companies.
At Atlas, we knew we
didn’t just want to plant trees.
We wanted to go that next level.
We wanted to listen to our employees
and see what they were interested in,
what they thought was important
because at the end of the day,
people like yourselves in this room,
you are the ones that actually matter
and can make the difference
to your business.
So the programs that we
decided to invest in
are Aboriginal environmental health,
global renewable energy sources,
New Zealand reforestation,
and many, many more.
Basically, we knew that this project
for us was a way for us
to help our stance in our climate impact,
but we also wanted to use
it as an opportunity,
the opportunity to make
a difference in the world
and all the communities that we touch.
If you’re going to make
a change in your business,
you can’t just focus on one thing.
You need to focus, and if it
goes across, go to all things.
You want to be able to look back
in two years and say,
“Ah, yes, that one decision we made
that one time has trickled down
and affected all areas of our business.”
Honestly, when I was given this project,
I just thought I’d be writing
some corporate environmental piece,
but that couldn’t be further
from the truth.
Though this may not seem
like a big project to many people,
for me, it’s huge.
I’m fresh out of my grad set,
I’ve only been in the company
for four months now,
and I’m actually the only
person from my company
that can come to this under 30s event,
which is pretty cool.
So if you needed proof
that you don’t actually have to be
the boss of your business to make change,
here I am.
At the end of the day,
you just need the passion, the drive,
and the ability to make actions
and actually follow through with them.
Thank you.
(Applause)