Lizzie Holmes, Sustainability Consultant in the Carbon & ESG team.
1.5 years, I started September 2022.
My day-to-day work involves a lot of excel spreadsheets, predominantly calculating emissions for clients. This feeds into writing reports such as environmental impact assessments or research pieces for public and private sector organisations. The main focus of my role is identifying opportunities for clients to reduce their impact on the surrounding environment – this could be through emissions reductions, adopting alternative business operations (e.g. material use), and minimising waste for example.
I have worked closely with Local Authorities to assess feedback from residents within their jurisdiction, which influenced our recommendations on the supply of caddy liners for food waste.
Most of the work I do revolves around assessing how infrastructure projects or organisations are contributing to national carbon emissions and how this effects that country meeting any legislated targets. I’ve also worked quite closely on the Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosure (TNFD) to help companies understand their impacts and dependencies on nature. This usually involves doing a gap analysis across the business against the recommended disclosures.
I have also had the opportunity to contribute to research on the wider environmental impacts of materials to inform evidence-based policy decision making regarding the separate collection of food waste. I was responsible for assessing the environmental impact of different caddy liner types (e.g. microplastic contamination, land use requirements for bioplastic production, and littering) in order to understand the advantages and disadvantages of using caddy liners to collect municipal food waste.
Because I don’t have an engineering background, a lot of the work I do on things like energy developments requires me to connect with colleagues across the business. I often lean on the expertise of streets engineers, renewable energy specialists, and waste management experts to get a holistic understanding of the projects I’m assessing.
I’ve had the opportunity to interview clients and local authorities which I really enjoyed. I’m interested in developing more in this area but I think taking the lead on client relationship management will come a little further down the line. I lead my local Green Team which has meant getting to know others around the office and building strong relationships within the business.
As mentioned above, I frequently connect with colleagues in other parts of the business which has helped me to develop a much broader understanding of infrastructure and how sustainability plays a role in developments. I feel much more confident in my knowledge of utilities and how these everyday necessities are supplied, and the complexity of such tasks (which I feel is often underestimated).
My manager supports me towards chartership and is so open in sharing his years’ of experience. My team has always made me feel encouraged, and I’ve learnt a lot about backing myself and feeling comfortable sharing my own expertise when I have new ideas.
Definitely the people I get to work with. The team are all so knowledgeable and open, and the office culture is great. I also like working on such a wide range of projects – the size of the company means the experience in the business is so varied.
