If you happened to miss my previous post, I recently finished an externship in Environmental Defense Fund's Corporate Partnerships Program, working on the Green Returns team. After graduating from Wharton last spring, I got the opportunity to work at EDF before beginning my full-time consulting job at Bain & Company. When I started at EDF, I hoped that the experience would teach me about corporate environmental management and expose me to a new perspective. After five months, I would say – mission accomplished.
During my time at EDF, I have worked in-depth on two projects. For the first two months, I scoped the landscape of corporate environmental sustainability benchmarking tools and initiatives. Most recently, I collected sustainability best practice content around key topics such as data center energy efficiency, paper use, and commercial lighting.
After working on these projects and supporting the Green Returns team on other tasks, I realize the importance and benefit of including environmental considerations in both long-term strategy and daily operations. The knowledge I acquired at EDF around environmental management is a new addition to my toolkit that I will use to help companies improve. I feel that I am now better able to holistically assess a company’s risk and opportunity by incorporating their impact on the environment into my strategic analysis. And from an operational perspective, I will be able to communicate to companies how addressing areas such as energy efficiency and waste reduction result in quick wins that save money and lessen environmental impact. Put quite simply, when I am faced with a company needing to reduce costs, my first question will now be – do they turn off the lights and computers at the end of the day?