Job Profile

What does your job involve and what might a typical day involve?

I work at Waste Watch on a campaign called Recycle Western Riverside; a flagship project working in south and west London to promote recycling. I oversee the direction and delivery of the campaign including all communication and community education activities. Day to day, this might involve approving the content of a new information leaflet, doing a radio interview or meeting colleagues to brainstorm ideas for a new campaign. But part of the job’s appeal is that really there’s no such thing as a typical day.

What qualifications and experience did you have before starting the job?

You don’t necessarily have to have an environmental background to work in this area. For this job, it’s more important to have communications or marketing experience. My undergraduate degree was in modern languages, but I became interested in social issues campaigning as a sabbatical officer in my students’ union. This was a great experience as it gave me my first taste of running ‘behaviour change’ campaigns, mostly around health and lifestyle issues. From there I worked in a busy press office at The Electoral Commission and then in the campaigns team running national public awareness campaigns to encourage democratic participation. My move into the environment sector was motivated by the rapid rise of green issues on the news and political agenda, but also because I saw many similarities between encouraging people to vote and encouraging people to recycle.

What are the best and worst bits of your job?

One of the best parts of the job is building a campaign from scratch, from developing the initial research and strategy through to the delivery and integration of the whole comms mix, i.e. advertising, PR, field marketing, outreach and so on. I love the variety and opportunity this gives for creativity. There’s also the natural buzz you get when people have seen your ads in the street or your campaign in the news. If there’s a down side, it’s writing the obligatory post-campaign evaluation as I always prefer to look forward to the next campaign, not back at the last.

What satisfaction do you get from your work and how does it make a difference?

I get most satisfaction from working with so many like-minded and committed people who care passionately about environmental and sustainability issues. It’s also very satisfying to see that you’ve made a real difference through your work and that you’re actually changing people’s attitudes and behaviour.

Do you have any tips for someone looking for a career in this area?

Green issues are hot currency at the moment and as political parties vie to out green each other, this can only be good news for jobs in the sector and for the environment as a whole. My advice for someone looking to build a career in environmental communications is to become a generalist and not a specialist. In many organisations there just isn’t the budget for huge marketing departments, so you need to have knowledge across a wide range of disciplines. A good way of getting this is through a marketing qualification. But whilst the theory is useful, you can’t beat on-the-job experience and, it goes without saying, a genuine passion for the subject.

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