When Eric Heineman decided to switch his college major from education to environmental studies six years ago, he remembered his father asking: “How are you going to get a job?”
Luckily for him, the job market is catching up to his eco-aspirations.
In March, Heineman, 26, began work as the first sustainability project manager at the University of Chicago, a position conceived last year to help coordinate green activities on campus. His duties include researching ways the school can become more sustainable and publicizing school events like Green Fest, to be held Friday as part of Earth Week.
It’s one of many green positions popping up around the city and across the country as companies and organizations strive to become more Earth-friendly.
“It used to be that you would work for an environmental non-profit, but now, almost any sector has some green opportunities,” said Peter Nicholson, executive director of Foresight Design Initiative, a Chicago non-profit dedicated to sustainable innovation. “There’s abundant opportunities, which are all relatively new.”
The American Solar Energy Society estimates that there were 8.5 million jobs in the renewable energy and energy efficiency industries in the U.S. as of the end of 2006. It forecasts there could be as many as 40 million such jobs by 2030 if federal policies are enacted to encourage renewable energy technology.
In the Chicago area, about 12 sustainability-related jobs get posted on various Web sites every week, said Nicholson, whose organization has been keeping track. That’s a lot compared to three years ago, he said, when there were “just a couple here and there.”
In some cases, existing jobs have been re-branded as “green,” as companies capitalize on the green fad, said Eric Crawford, president of Greenman Alliance, a Milwaukee-based recruitment firm that connects people with environment-related jobs. The supply of green jobs is “not as big as everyone thinks it is,” he said, and the best thing many people can do is pioneer changes within their own organizations to reduce their companies’ environmental impact.
Chris Peterson, director of the environmental studies program at Loyola University, said he hasn’t yet seen a surge in green-focused employers recruiting on campus, but he expects that to change.
Since 2005, the number of students majoring in environmental studies has grown from 32 to 66, Peterson said, and the scope of the program has expanded.
“I think there’s going to be an awful lot of businesses that will be trying to improve their environmental reputation,” Peterson said.
The growing green job market is benefiting everyone from skilled laborers to entrepreneurs.
At one level are the so-called “green-collar” jobs, which essentially are blue-collar jobs that address sustainability and climate change — like installing solar panels and manufacturing wind turbines.
There also are green-minded professionals who have decided to make environmentalism more than a lifestyle and incorporate it into their careers.
After 25 years working in the insurance and staffing industries, Jill Russell left the corporate world four years ago to work at her husband’s sustainable architecture firm because, she said, “I felt there was missing something from my life.”
Russell spent a summer getting certified as a green building consultant and is now director of sustainability at Wolbrink Architects, founded by her husband, Victor Wolbrink, in Ukrainian Village.
“From a monetary standpoint it’s been challenging, but I think that the rewards come back tenfold,” said Russell, 54, who said she’s making one-quarter what she was before. “I feel good about what I’m doing, like I’m making a difference on a global scale.”
In January, Nicholson started holding sustainable career workshops to accommodate the overwhelming number of inquiries he was receiving from people hoping to pursue green careers. The workshops inform people about the opportunities available, how their skills might be transferable and what kind of training they need to get their feet in the door.
All five of the workshops held so far have sold out within hours of being announced, he said.
“For a lot of folks, they’re looking for a job that aligns with their values, which is the same reason they buy green products,” Nicholson said. “Working for the paycheck is not enough anymore; they want to know that their work is making an impact on the world.”
That’s not to say green jobs necessarily pay less than traditional jobs, he said. Some jobs that require specialized knowledge, such as a renewable energy engineer, are quite lucrative.
Heineman, of Lakeview, attended one of the workshops and said he was surprised to learn how many green job opportunities existed and how many other people were after them. At the time, he was working as a “technology facilitator” at a Lincoln Park school, where he pioneered several “under-the-radar” projects to make the school more sustainable. He said those efforts helped land him the job at the University of Chicago.
“It’s a good time in that these opportunities are starting to open up,” said Heineman, who, after graduating from University of Vermont with his B.S. in environmental studies, worked as an organic farmer and traveled the world visiting eco-villages. “But they’re still hard to get because a lot of people want them.”
The boost in eco-consciousness has stoked the entrepreneurial spirit in some Chicagoans.
At Green Genes, an eco-friendly children’s boutique in Andersonville that opened in March, Heather Muenstermann and her partner Christina Isperduli sell clothes made of soy-based fibers, beeswax crayons, biodegradable diapers and diaper bags made of recycled products, among other items.
Muenstermann, 36, who previously had been working at a children’s clothing store, said she and Isperduli, 35, a software engineer, decided to open the store after their own efforts to recycle opened their eyes to the wide world of green living.
“Once we started recycling, we couldn’t go back,” Muenstermann said.
It was a similar story for sisters Heidi Bailey and Krista White, who went from being stay-at-home moms to owners of the eco-lifestyle store A Cooler Planet in Roscoe Village, also in March. They sell green wares such as organic cotton T-shirts and chemical-free cleaning soaps, and they plan to offer composting classes.
Bailey, 38, said she and White, 39, started greening their lives after having children and wanted to share their knowledge with other people.
“We would have conversations with friends about all the simple ways to go green and they would say, ‘I didn’t know that,’ ” Bailey said. “Not everyone has the time and wherewithal to spend hours researching these things.”
aelejalderuiz@tribune.com
