Meet James - The Future Generations Changemaker

I was initially studying for a bachelor’s degree in Physical Geography and planning to become a meteorologist, but as I progressed through the four years, I thought there would be better career opportunities in wind energy, particularly living in the Humber region.

I went on to complete a master’s degree in Renewable Energy, developing a passion for the environment, so I absolutely knew that sustainability was the field I wanted to begin my career in.

I joined Cranswick Country Foods, which produces fresh and added-value pork, in 2020 and am now an Environmental Officer covering four sites.

In my role, I enjoy identifying the solutions that can be tackled quickly, whilst working on bigger longer-term projects to improve our overall impact. I’m passionate about sustainability and opening up the conversation around issues in our industry. Not only is demand for reducing environmental impact increasing from our customers but consumers, particularly the younger generation, are challenging information.

Since I joined Cranswick, I knew I wanted to support schools and education. The generations in school today are the people who will be key to helping us meet our future targets. I am proud to have developed a workshop that provides an insight into the career opportunities in sustainability and support in choosing subjects that can help to achieve them. The programme also looks at the impact of energy and utilities, transport, diet and lifestyle on the environment, what happens if we don’t act now and opens a discussion on how we could help at home, at school and at work. Supported by the business, the first trial was a great success, so I am hoping to look at rolling this out to other schools in the area and beyond. I think one moment that really stood out to me was listening to two young people articulately discussing their well-considered pros and cons of wind turbines. Children are growing up, talking about environmental issues and hearing them have such conversations gives me hope for the future.

The biggest piece of advice I would give to others in the industry would be to engage everyone across the business, no matter the role. Sustainability affects every part of our industry, so it is critical to get buy-in from everyone, including the rest of the supply chain, and work on clear targets together. Part of the way that we are doing this is through our Second Nature Champions, an initiative that helps all departments within our business feed their ideas to reduce our footprint up to key decision makers. It’s great because it gives all our colleagues a voice and means they can directly do some good within the company. I’d love to see people and businesses across the globe come together to confront sustainability issues.

Job roles in sustainability and the environment are a relatively new concept to businesses; many companies are beginning their journeys and still trying to find their feet, but Cranswick is already quite far down the path, which I think is because there’s a massive buy-in from the team at all levels. Our Second Nature strategy has given everyone across the business an awareness of our sustainability targets and people are now more conscious of the impact of every decision they make.

James, Environmental Officer