Air Quality Engineer
If you’re looking for jobs that help the environment without degrees, then you’ll want to consider options other than air quality engineer. This particular position generally requires a bachelor’s degree at a minimum with a focus on environmental engineering, and potential employers look kindly on completed internships. That’s not an inconsequential amount of personal investment, but it more than makes up for it with its compensation. Air quality engineers focus on maintaining clear indoor air quality or in remediating contaminated sites. Related tasks may include completing statistical modelling and ensuring that businesses comply with governmental regulations.
Chief Sustainability Officer (CSOs)
You’ve doubtlessly noticed that corporations and consumers alike have started clamouring for more environmentally friendly products and practices. That desire raises a question, though: How can big companies best achieve that? Enter the Chief Sustainability Officer, an executive-level position and one of the highest paying environmental jobs. This position requires years of experience and isn’t an entry-level position. But given that CSOs help set corporate policy, it may be one of the most consequential.
Conservation Scientists
Though conservation scientists sound like generalists, they are one of the green job examples that has a very specific function and skillset. Rather than ensconcing themselves in laboratories, factories, or offices, they work largely outdoors. Their tasks typically include:
- Managing forests, including national parks
- Protecting at-risk habitats
- Consulting with private landowners and local governments
- Monitoring clear-cut forest land to ensure ongoing sustainability
- Assessing soil quality
Working as a conservation scientist typically requires a bachelor’s degree. Most people interested in the field focus on agricultural science, environmental science, or forestry.
Energy Analyst
Energy analysts work in exactly that opposite manner as conservation scientists — but their contributions are every bit as important. These environmental professionals monitor energy markets, track energy data, make efficiency projections, and offer recommendations based on those projections. While most energy analysts have a bachelor’s degree, this is one of those jobs that helps the environment without a degree, at least as long as you demonstrate proficiency with technical programs such as Excel, Microsoft Access, and Visual Basic for Applications.
Environmental Consultant
Unlike other green jobs examples listed in this post, environmental consultants function as generalists. This investigative career can fit well with any number of fields. Why? Environmental consultants marry scientific knowledge with an awareness of the regulatory landscape to perform tasks such as:
- Identifying water, air, and/or land contamination
- Advising about waste-management policies
- Conducting environmental audits
- Managing regulatory concerns
- Collecting and interpreting data relevant to the situation
- Assisting with the implementation of green building practices
- Providing guidance related to human health and safety
- Managing sustainability initiatives
- Identifying sources of contamination
Environmental Project Manager
While environmental project managers possess many of the same skills as environmental consultants, they have a different professional focus. Instead of offering consulting expertise, environmental project managers employ management skills to directly lead private companies in implementing environmental goals. Some of these may include setting and achieving corporate objectives, discussing applicable initiatives with relevant third parties, acquiring key personnel, using data to create informative reports for other decision makers, and more.
Agriculture and Food Scientist
A broad professional discipline that touches virtually every area of our food chain, agriculture and food science involves examining every area of food production from field to factory so that consumers can feel confident putting fork to mouth and the environment can stay safe. Agriculture and foods scientists tend to work as animal scientists (which “typically conduct research on domestic farm animals”), food scientists and technologists (who “study the basic elements of food”), plant scientists (they “work to improve crop yields and advise food and crop developers”), and soil scientists (who “develop methods of conserving and managing soil”).
Geoscientist
Geoscientists are highly educated (usually with a master’s degree) and conduct primary research that’s disseminated to other professionals, used by private companies, or received by governmental entities. Geoscientists generally perform the following tasks:
- Plan and carry out field studies, in which they visit locations to collect samples and conduct surveys
- Analyse aerial photographs, well logs (detailed records of geologic formations found during drilling), rock samples, and other data sources to locate deposits of natural resources and estimate their size
- Conduct laboratory tests on samples collected in the field
- Make geologic maps and charts
- Prepare written scientific reports
Hydrologists
Water makes the world go round. Well, not literally, but the availability and cleanliness of water informs many practical, regulatory, and geopolitical concerns. Hydrologists study the way in which water moves throughout the environment, determine its current cleanliness, determine risks that may lead to pollution, and provide action plans. Hydrologists find work with both public and private employers.
Renewable Energy Consultant
Individuals working as renewable energy consultants show quite a lot of variability in their educational backgrounds and employers. One thing remains constant, though: Renewable energy consultants help interested clients or employers to understand their current energy requirements and how they can best add renewable energy sources into their power mix.
