If you would like a job that pays you to help slow down the Climate Change Monsters that are killing our biosphere, then a Sustainability Cheerleader + Manager could be the job for you.
Here’s one way to get this job. Go into any business, ask for the manager and then offer to help them take specific environmental actions that will save our biosphere. Show the manager your Sustainability Checklist of things you would like to help them do. Mention that you will use social media and the press to get the news out about the eco actions the business is taking.
Tell the managers you can be a contract worker so the business does not have to hire you as an employee. If you don’t have any experience yet, price your sustainability services low enough at first so you can be doing your own on-the-job-training.
Go business to business until you get your first Sustainability Cheerleader + Manager job.
Make your own custom Sustainability Checklist, or start out with the short list below.
Check out “Another Way To Get This Eco Rad Job” below – for a fun icebreaker approach.
Sustainability Checklist – vs#1
+ Run an energy efficiency incentive program.
+ Do an Earth News[letter] and Eco Vids for the business’s social media, bulletin board and company email.
+ Maintain recycle and composting stations that are rad and informative.
+ Offer a bike and ride share program.
+ Carbon offset fossil fuel use via Carbonfund.org or other org.
+ Post informative and fun eco signs at recycle station, bulletin board and beyond.
+ Buy wind or solar energy credits via the electric or gas utility, or non-profit orgs.
+ Evaluate and complete energy efficiency upgrades – starting with the ones that are the most cost effective.
+ Do a little energy savings report every week or so.
+ Do a quick energy audit every month or so.
+ Get a “Green Business” certification or join “1% for the Planet”.
+ Sponsor a climate protection non-profit organization – such as League of Conservation Voters or 350.org.
For more actions to add to your Sustainability Checklist, check out the ‘Sustainability Checklists’ section, and the ‘Actions and Projects’ section.
Two Cool Eco Jobs In One
As a Sustainability Cheerleader you can use awards [with a little fanfare], video [to record the presentation], social media, comedy, art, dance, pics, signs, photo ops, puppets, costumes, games, videos [yours or others], PR and/or psych to encourage and honor businesses, employees, customers, neighbors and others for taking environmental actions.
As a Sustainability Manager you can help a business or others take environmental actions – such as, make and manage recycle and compost stations, do energy audits and upgrades, start a carbon offset program, sponsor an ecological non-profit, make products more eco, reduce single use and/or reduce waste, start a biking, bus and carpool rewards program, and more.
Whatever your talent is – writing, math, filmmaking, sports, communication, art, music, engineering, software or whatever – there is a good chance there is a way to use that talent to do your Sustainability Cheerleader + Manager [SCM] work. Contact Stele to talk about how to use your talents in your SCM job.
At first, you may not have the skills to do some of the eco actions on the list that you show businesses and neighbors. When you don’t have a skill for an eco action that the business [or neighbor] wants to take, offer to find a professional or handyman that can do that work. Feel free to ask the professional or handyman if you can help them do the work, and ask for a referral commission when appropriate.
Again, consider offering your services as a contract worker so that a business does not have to make you an employee.
Help businesses decide if you should come in once a week, several times a week, several times a month, part-time or full-time.
Job Perspective
Remember, even if a business that you talk to does not hire you, it’s crucial that we ask and encourage more businesses managers and others to take the important eco actions that are necessary to extend the life of our planet and save our lives.
The amount of time you spend doing your Sustainability Cheerleader job versus your Sustainability Manager job will depend on the business’s needs, your skills and your interests.
Know that a lot of businesses that do not think they need a Sustainability Cheerleader + Manager really DO need one.
Our planet needs at least 40 million SCMs to help save our oceans, soils, air and slow down climate change – so go get that job!
When asking a business or a neighbor to be their Sustainability Cheerleader, offer to work once a day or week or month to cheer on the team to take environmental actions and help them take some of those actions.
If all things go well, you might get so good at helping businesses and peeps become sustainable that you will get a job as the Chief Sustainability Officer [CSO] for a company somewhere!
If you already work for a business that you like, ask to be the Sustainability Cheerleader + Manager as a part of your work week.
Feel free to tweak any of the steps and strategies we recommend to match your style.
Contact Stele at xoearth.org/contact if you want to talk to him about how to use your current talents to succeed as a Sustainability Cheerleader + Manager.
Title Tweeks
Depending on your vibe and the eco services that you offer, you can call yourself a Sustainability Coach, Sustainability Cheerleader, Chief Sustainability Officer [CSO], Sustainability Guy, XOEarth Coach, Sustainability Girl, Sustainability Geek, Sustainability Assistant, Sustainability Coordinator, Sustainability Consultant, Sustainability Helper, Sustainability Champion, Sustainability Smarty, Sustainability Manager, or SCM. Feel free to substitute ‘XOEarth’ for ‘Sustainability’ in your title, such as ‘XOEarth Coach’, if you would like.
Sustainability Checklists
+ Business Sustainability Checklist – WacoGreen
+ Sustainability Manager’s Recycling Program Checklist
+ Simple Checklist To Green Your Office
+ The Small Business Guide to Sustainable Business Practices
+ Our XOEarth.org/Works page.
+ Sustainable business practices: IISD’s checklist.
+ Individual Actions: United Nations: Sustainable Development Goals
+ Sustainable Development Goals: Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts: United Nations
+ Guides: Access guides on how to make your business more sustainable: NZ Sustainable Business Council blc
+ 10 action items for your sustainability strategy, ala ‘Green to Gold Playbook
+ A Checklist for Embedding Sustainability in Your Company: enablon.com
+ Checklist for healthy and sustainable communities: NSW Australia
Actions and Projects
+ Start, upgrade and manage recycling stations and systems to reduce resource use.
+ Start, upgrade and manage the compost system to reduce methane greenhouse gas emissions.
+ Encourage and coordinate programs that conserve resources, such as water, paper, electricity, natural gas, gasoline and jet fuel.
+ Study up and then suggest some fun energy saving tricks and tips.
+ Offer your opinion on how to make a business’s products more sustainable.
+ Help businesses and others offset their carbon footprint via xoearth.org/Carbon-Offset.
+ Show a business how to donate part of their profits to non-profit environmental organizations via xoearth.org/Carbon-Offset.
+ Show managers and others how to carbon offset the transportation fuel used at XOEarth.org/Carbon-Offset.
+ Start and run biking, carpool and bus incentive projects.
+ Encourage organic and plant-based foods in cafes and break rooms.
+ Start and maintain food gardens outside or inside. Use hoop-domes in winter.
+ Help businesses and others divest from fossil fuel companies, and then invest ecologically and ethically.
+ Install smart thermostats to reduce energy waste – such as the Nest system.
+ Clean refrigerator and appliance coils, and heater filters.
+ Honor and reward those who use public transit, carpool and efficient vehicles.
+ Encourage and honor employees and customers for their personal eco choices.
+ Help business find ways to reduce airline travel – such as via teleconferences.
+ Encourage and help facilitate citizen participation and voting during election times.
+ Insulate windows, door, fridge and hot H2O lines.
+ Facilitate a professional energy audit for the business or home.
+ Learn to do and offer a simple energy audit.
+ Help a business or neighbor find companies to do sustainable repairs, upgrades and remodels.
+ Check oven and refrigerator gaskets.
+ Install LED lights.
+ Set water heater at 120-130F, refrigerator at 37F, freezer at 3F.
+ Put up stylish clothes lines.
+ Organize, and maintain sustainability structures.
+ Paint roofs white in hot climates to keep buildings cooler.
+ On most any day, simply giving out your environmental awards or the XOEarth Awards is a good way to cheer on managers, employees, customers, neighbors and others on the team.
+ Help a business use their social media networks to encourage and thank employees and customers to take environmental actions. Help write and share posts and images that call on the peeps to make sustainable choices.
+ Help a business create signs and notices for inside and outside that encourage everyone to take environmental actions.
Eco Psych
+ If you organize an environmental rally, use banners, flags, signs or other props to create a stage inside or outside, then get up there and cheer your team on.
+ Do eco cheers while doing cool jumps, victory dances, rad moves or cartwheels. Consider using some cheers that focus on specific environmental actions.
+ When you are cheering on the team as a coach, consider wearing an eco coach or eco hero outfit if it seems right.
+ When you are cheering on the team as a cheerleader, blue and green pom-poms from repurposed t-shirts or fabric might be cool. Wear an eco cheerleader or eco hero outfit if it makes sense.
+ Leading a group in a specific cheer or an eco sing-along can be good.
+ Consider using a little bell, a chime, a drinking glass and spoon, a cow bell or something else to ‘ring’ to thank team members for taking an eco action. “More Earth Cowbell.”
+ When cheering on a group, some of the group may look skeptical or even critical. However, know that most of those skeptical looking peeps probably do like your talk. It can be hard to tell whether or not people in an audience like or dislike your presentation by watching them. A lot of peeps want to let loose and cheer with you – but peer pressure and stuff can keep them from whooping it up – or even looking happy during your presentation.
+ Even though some people might appear annoyed even as they are clapping or cheering, inside they may be thrilled that you are getting them and others to stand up and support the eco actions or eco issue that you are cheering about. We have talked with peeps that have told us afterwards that they wish more people would have stood up and cheered – even though we thought that those very people were annoyed during our presentations due to their ambivalent vibe.
+ It’s time for more of us on Team XOEarth to holler and cheer – to show support for our side, and boo – too to show our disdain for our opponents. So let’s whoop it up while we are saving our biosphere.
+ Thousands of people jam the stadiums so they can yell out loud for their team. Not only is it fun to cheer out loud for the team, it’s also good for our team spirit, and it’s a good way to invite others to join and play on Team XOEarth. Let’s show ’em that our eco logical game is the best game on Earth.
+ Create and seek out new ways to challenge and honor managers, employees, customers, residents or neighbors for taking their eco logical actions. Then keep your environmental awards, XOEarth Awards, cool moves or your other classics ready to go.
Resources
+ Chief sustainability officer: The chief sustainability officer, sometimes known by other titles, is the corporate title of an executive position within a corporation that is in charge of the corporation’s ‘environmental’ programmes. / wikipedia.org
+ The Colorado University MENV Sustainability Planning and Management specialization prepares students to design and implement sustainability initiatives. / colorado.edu
+ Sustainable management: Sustainable management takes the concepts from sustainability and synthesizes them with the concepts of management. Sustainability has three branches: the environment, the needs of present and future generations, and the economy. / wikipedia.org
+ Sustainability and environmental management: At the global scale sustainability and environmental management involves managing the oceans, freshwater systems, land and atmosphere, according to sustainability principles. / wikipedia.org
+ What a true ESPN of sustainability would look like. / greenbiz.com
+ Is a Sustainability Career on Your Green Horizon? / James Hamilton / Bureau of Labor Statistics .gov
+ From Green Coach to Environmental Leader / greendallas.net
+ Additional services that a Sustainability Cheerleader + Manager may want to offer. / xoearth.org/Works
+ Sustainability Management Students Gain the Skills to Change the World / Earth Institute / youtube.com
+ American University Kogod School of Business has a masters in sustainability management that melds business administration, environmental science and public policy. / youtube.com
+ Current Sustainability jobs listings / indeed.com
+ CU Denver graduate student Carrie Paykoc interviews Director of Sustainability for Boulder Community Hospital, Kai Abelkis. / youtube.com
Here’s Another Way To Get This Eco Rad Job
1] Go into any business [or neighbor] and offer to give the manager an environmental award for any eco actions they are currently taking, and/or, for any additional eco actions they say they will consider taking. To help the manager choose an additional eco action, show them your Sustainability Checklist of environmental actions that is on your computer, notebook, flyer or smartphone.
Option: Use one of our XOEarth Environmental Awards, or design and print your own.
Option: Make your own Sustainability Checklist or start with this short list here.
+ Carbon Offset fossil fuel use – via Carbonfund.org or some other org.
+ Earth News[letter] and Eco Vids for the business’s social media, bulletin board, company email, recycle stations.
+ Recycle and composting stations that are rad and informative.
+ Bike and ride share program.
+ “Green Business” or “1% for the Planet” certification.
+ Buy wind or solar energy credits via your electric or gas utility.
+ Employees and managers invited to help with one of the business’s eco projects.
+ Monthly quick and simple energy audit.
+ Sponsor a climate protection non-profit organization – such as League of Conservation Voters or 350.org.
For more actions to add to your Sustainability Checklist, check out the Sustainability Checklists section, and the Actions and Projects section.
2] Before presenting the environmental award to manager, offer to video the ‘environmental award presentation’ and to post it on your or on your and the business’s Facebook page or other social network.
Option: Add some fanfare to the environmental award presentation as you honor the manager and business for their environmental actions or pledge. Fanfare examples: a victory dance, an eco cheer, a bow, a “go team Earth” call, tell an eco story, say thanks on behalf of a future person or species, sing an eco song, recite an eco poem, or use some other talent you have. Other ideas are below and at XOEarth Honors.
3] Present the award to the manager – with or without recording a video and the fanfare. The manager will smile big-time and thank you for the award – if the award presentation went well. The manager may think that’s all you have to say. Now the next fun thing!
4] Next, say you would like to be the Sustainability Cheerleader + Manager for their business – several times a month, several times a week or every day. Tell the manager that you would like to help with their current environmental commitments, and help roll-out the environmental action(s) the manager said they would consider taking from a list of environmental actions that you showed them.
Option: Offer to manage the recycling, composting and trash stations.
Option: Offer to write a “(company name here) Earth News” or “Green Tweaks” newsletter that can posted on Facebook, social media and added to a company email newsletter. Also, offer to print the “Earth News” as a sign to put on bulletin boards and near the recycle, compost and trash bins. Earth News will be good PR for the company. Offer to post the newsletter on the business’s and/or your Facebook wall.
Option: Offer to meet regularly with the manager to report your progress on ongoing assignments and projects, and to consider new sustainability projects.
Option: Offer to do the work as a contract worker so the business does not have to make you an employee.
Option: To start, offer to work for a lowered hourly rate or per completed project. Increase your hourly or project rate as you get better.
Option: XOEarth Stele may be able to help you with your first “Earth News” and other work, depending on time and location – for free.
Option: Offer to do a 5 or 30 minute walk around while offering suggestions as to what sustainability actions the business can take. Feel free to make this offer before and/or after the manager says yes or no to hiring you.
5] Finally, if the manager offers you the job, yeahhh, have fun getting paid to save our planet and our lives!
Or, if the manager does not offer you the job, yeahhh anyway, because you have honored another business for taking actions and for pledging to consider taking additional actions to save our biosphere! Plus, then you get to go to another business [or neighbor] to give them an environmental award, and offer them your Sustainability Cheerleader + Manager services!
Meeting Prep And Dialog
If you want us to send you some free XOEarth Awards to present to the businesses, send a self addressed stamped envelope to our XOEarth office. The ‘slow’ XOEarth Awards work best for most award presentations – because they have a place to write the name of the business, the eco action(s) the business is taking and eco actions they promise to consider, and your signature. However, when the manager is in a big hurry, the ‘fast’ XOEarth Awards may work better.
Get one of our Sustainability Checklists or make your own list of sustainability actions that businesses and neighbors can take. Print out, or put the Sustainability Checklist on your smartphone, laptop or flyer so you can show it to businesses and others. Check out our Sustainability Checklists below and our XOEarth.org/Works page.
The first time you go into a business and are talking to the manager (or neighbor) you may want to say, “Hello, my name is ________. And your name? ………… Nice to meet you (their name). For helping keep our endangered planet cool, livable and more fun, I would like to give you an environmental award to honor you (your business) for the eco actions that you are taking, and for considering one or more of the eco actions on this Sustainability Checklist?
Do you take any of the eco actions that are on this list? ………… That’s great! Would you be willing to take one or more of the other environmental actions on this Sustainability Checklist? ………… Thanks so much for pledging to take (or considering to take) that action(s) to help save our biosphere and our lives.”
If the manager says it is ok that you video the presentation for social media or other media, use your camera on a tripod or a grip, or have a friend video the presentation.
As you are filling out and giving the person the award or after the person accepts the award, add some fanfare that might be media worthy to thank them for their environmental actions or pledge. How big or little the fanfare is will depend on the situation and vibe – you decide. Fanfare examples include a quiet-one-word-cheer or a long-loud-big-game-style-cheer, a victory dance, a flash mob, some cool eco facts, rad climate change stats, a thankyou song that you sing, a singalong, an eco story, a rap, a magic trick that you do while stating an eco metaphor, an Earth warrior yoga pose that you do, some other signature moves that you can do, the X-O-Earth arm and hand signal, or some other symbolic item that you give to the manager [such as a leaf or flower from a local source]. More fanfare examples can be found at XOEarth
Again, offer to post any pics and video or this ‘environmental award presentation/show’ to your and/or the business’s social media to promote their business and to encourage others to take environmental actions too.
At this point, it is probably time to end the ‘environmental award’ part of your presentation/show. Pause for a moment.
Now it’s time. It’s time to tell the manager or person that you would like to be their Sustainability Cheerleader + Manager. Offer to come in once or twice a week, once or twice a month or every day. Offer to help roll-out and manage the environmental actions the business is taking or has said they promise or will consider to take. If relevant, show them and talk again about some of the things on your Sustainability Checklist that you would like to do for them. Offer your Sustainability Checklist to them – to be sent by email and/or the printed version.
When a manager does not have time to talk, or they do not tell you a specific environmental action that they take or promise to take, simply hand them a ‘fast’ XOEarth Awards and say, “This award honors you for the environmental actions that you are currently taking and start taking this month to help save our biosphere. Thanks for your time.”
Again, if the manager says yes to hiring you, great, celebrate that you got the job!
If they say no to hiring you, great, celebrate that you have encouraged a business or neighbor to take actions that will help save our planet! Then go to the next business or neighbor to give them an environmental award, do your talk and cheer them on too!
Activists
Our planet and our future needs people who are willing to go into businesses un-announced to call on managers, employees and customers to take actions that are more environmental and more eco ethical.
Even if you know you will not get hired by an un-ethical business that is killing our planet, use your environmental awards and your Sustainability Cheerleader tools to encourage them to do the green thing.
More about being a *Sustainability Cheerleader Activist* is on the xoearth.org/Occupy page. We call you an *Occupy Cheerleader* on the xoearth.org/Occupy page.
If you want your name added to our xoearth.org/Works. LinkedIn page as a Sustainability Cheerleader + Manager, we ask you to donate 1% of what you make to your favorite non-profit environmental organization. More info about that at xoearth.org/Works .
Cheers
Thanks for [buying carbon offsets] for the planet this week
Thanks for keeping our sweet planet sweet
Thanks for [riding your bike/the bus/carpooling to work] this week
Thanks for saving our planet’s ecology
Thanks for [donating 1% for the planet] this week
Thanks for [slowing down the climate change monsters this week
Thanks for [slowing down the hurricanes/ wildfires/ floods/ heatwaves this week
Thanks for saving our planet for you and me
Go Team Earth – let’s make our businesses and homes green
Go Team Earth – for all the beings of the future
Go Team Earth – for all the life that loves to live
Go Team Earth – for all the children not yet born
Go Team Earth – for all the lovers yet to kiss
Go Team Earth – for the oceans, rivers, forests, air, soil and climate
Go Team Earth – reduce, reuse, recycle, rethink, restore
We look forward to your suggestions and comments.
Contact Stele at xoearth.org/Contact if you would like more info or help.
Good luck and we have fun working as a Sustainability Cheerleader + Manager.
For all the life, Stele Ely
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