Back in 2018, according to Sandra Pallier, design manager at Microsoft and director at ClimateAction.Tech, nobody was talking about climate change at work.

Which is problematic to hear – the science on climate change has been around for decades, and with “reduce, reuse recycle” a mantra from the 1990s, and pictures of desperate polar bears clinging to melting ice a trademark of the 2000s. 2018 is surely, if anything, late to climate crisis conversations.

Perhaps in the world of technology, with its eyes reaching to thrust humanity into the future, the prospect of a world fighting for water resources, half underwater and the other half on fire, was not an attractive conversation.

“There was a quietness at work in the design industry,” Pallier said. “But I saw this quietness as both a problem but also an opportunity.”

Pallier used this quietness to speak out, a first step in bringing awareness to climate change, and what companies can do about it.

But back in 2019, Pallier, in her own words, was a “measly young interactive designer,” who did not hold much power in her organisation.

“But the good thing about having less power is that you are a bit more mobile, a bit more flexible, and you can be a bit more daring,” Pallier said.

With climate change awareness on the rise, and protests launching across the globe, Pallier realised she could use her position as a small fish in a big pond to her advantage.

“In this moment I realised I could be the person to challenge the status quo.”

She found herself bringing up climate change not just during a coffee break, but in meetings, planning documents, project feedback. She brought other people into the conversation, and transformed conversations around the weather and even climate change to what her organisation, and the people involved, could do to be more sustainable.

These conversations happened, though, when Pallier had little power.

“The actions that you are able to take and feel comfortable taking might look very different from someone who is very early in their career,” Pallier addressed the leaders and decision makers in attendance at DIGIT’s inaugural ESG Summit.

“Everybody’s first step can be talking about climate,” she said, “but this is one of the easy things to do and I want you to do better.”

Pallier ranked corporate climate action in three categories: easy, medium, and hard.

While everyone can start at the easy level – which is breaking the climate silence – she is calling on leaders and managers to do better.

But before embarking on the sustainability journey, Pallier equipped the audience with a ‘getting started backpack’ with green design principles.

The Green Design Backpack

The ‘backpack’ provides some important information people need to know before they start their sustainability route.

“First, is that the climate crisis doesn’t happen in a vacuum,” Pallier said. “We love to talk about carbon, we love to measure offsets, but it’s more than that.

“It’s not just about the environment either, it’s about exploitation.”

Pallier connected environmental issues to oft overlooked social issues – the destruction of the environment harms people, and disproportionately harms the most vulnerable and marginalised communities first.

Further, technology relies on resources and manufacturing, which can often be harvested or carried out with little regard for the people making it possible.

From cobalt mining in the Congo to union busting in Amazon packaging centres, tech practices harming the environment are often directly harming people as well.

Also a part of the ‘backpack’s’ realisations is that digital is physical. Precious metals required for hardware needs to be mined, often in endangered environments, often with little regard for the rights of the individuals mining them. Software runs on electricity, which is often created by burning fossil fuels. While technologists might want technology to be the solution to the climate crisis, it is important to acknowledge that it is a major contributor as well.

But along in the backpack were two other lessons: that big change starts small, and climate can be hard to talk about.

It can be difficult to bring up the concept of climate change in companies where many actions, direct or indirect, are complicit in the destruction of the environment, and therefore the destruction of lives. But it is because of this importance that Pallier says talking is the first step, but it cannot be anyone’s last step if they really want to combat climate change.

Step by Step

If your company isn’t talking about climate change, it’s likely far behind the times. While that is an excellent place to start, leaders, managers, and decision makers should be going the extra step to ensure sustainability is integrated into their business.

Empowering people is an essential part of medium actions.

“There are definitely a few people in your company who feel deeply about climate and want to take action,” Pallier said. “Giving them the room and the time to implement this is so important.”

Giving people the space to follow their passions and implement their values in a company can be vital to sustainability transformation efforts.

“These people might go away and optimise some business practices, or some of their work,” Pallier said.

This can look like simplifying user design and reducing payloads – decreasing the amount of data used and transferred means less electricity, less storage, and a less overall environmental impact.

Deleting unused data can decrease electricity expenditure, and optimising services can even make the more secure and interoperable.

“A lot of end users get rid of devices not because the hardware is broken, but because the old devices are no longer compatible with newer software,” pallier explained. “Optimising therefore can increase the longevity of these devices.”

Pallier also pointed to transparency and adaptability as key ‘medium’ level changes companies and employees can push for.

Having transparent climate initiatives and adaptable services and platforms to varying energy needs can be key in reaching net zero targets.

While these are design changes that can be made across companies to decrease emissions and reduce waste, Pallier still only ranks them as medium steps when it comes to climate change.

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Where Things Get Hard

The hard part comes for those at the top – this is where leaders are tasked with challenging the status quo, changing business decision making and the culture, and centering climate action.

It’s about changing goals, which would require a paradigm shift in how companies function, the goals they try to achieve, and how they measure success.

“At the highest level, the biggest goal is power, having the biggest market share, or money,” Pallier said, “but what if there was a different goal?”

Pallier says a real transformation would require companies to “put care first.”

“So this is mainly to do with how we’re currently measuring success, how we’re currently thinking about the goals of our companies.

“What if we change that to put care first and put societal and planetary health at the centre? What would that look like?”

It would require the environment and positive societal outcomes to be put at the forefront of project design and implementation, it would require companies to ask if they should implement new technologies or start new projects, and it would fundamentally change what drives businesses.