Balancing Priorities in Sustainability
By Samantha Leigh, Sustainability Consultant, Green Spark Group
Given the complexities of daily life, we’re constantly forced to ask ourselves: what choice is truly right, given the trade-offs each one demands?
Recently, I have been reflecting about priorities in my work and personal life. Whether deciding between chocolate brands or evaluating film vendor services, I’m always balancing different sustainability priorities in my decisions.
Making choices is a value-laden effort, and we often look to expert and community guidance for help. As a Green Spark Group consultant, it is often my privilege and responsibility to be the expert in the room when it comes to sustainable decision-making. But sustainability is complex and filled with contradictions and tradeoffs.
So how do we make these decisions, and how do we know if we made the “right” one?
The decisions we make reflect our values – or, in my case, the values of our clients alongside our knowledge of sustainable practices in the screen industries. In the past decade, we’ve seen a decided shift in focus and resources from waste diversion to emissions reduction. This change reflects larger industry shifts in carbon accounting practices, following sustainability reporting requirements. With limited resources (read: money), deciding between sustainability priorities results in tradeoffs that must be critically considered.
Making difficult decisions that result in trade-offs is a key theme in sustainability. I’m currently completing a Master of Science in Sustainable Development at the University of Sussex, and all of our coursework confronts this complexity. When I work on productions, we are often hyper-focused on tackling the largest impact areas for emissions (in other words, fuel!). This can result in a tradeoff of working through better material sourcing and waste diversion approaches. Ideally, I would love to be in a position to prioritise sustainability in all aspects of a production’s energy and material use, but external factors including client priorities and the number of hours in a day prevent this outcome.
The conundrum of working in sustainability is that no decision is objectively “right” because there are always tradeoffs.
Balancing sustainable priorities in my work, school, and personal life is a challenge – no doubt about it. I struggle with analysis paralysis and feelings of climate anxiety. Did I make the right call? Should I have framed my report differently? Is this approach really going to make a difference?
Fortunately, I am privileged to work with colleagues, clients, and collaborators who face many of the same dilemmas. So when I find myself over-analysing different priorities, I take a breath and remind myself that sustainability is a learning journey, even for the experts out there.
