It’s difficult to figure out what to say about this. The new Trellis/Weinreb Group The State of the Sustainability Profession 2024 report discusses freelance sustainability jobs and projects posted on Upwork. Curiosity got to me and I looked around the website. Searching on “sustainability” in “Projects” brought up more than 1,500 results. Most of the listings were for writing sustainability articles, website content or were actually unrelated to sustainability. Some, however, were shocking:
- Conducting a company ESG/sustainability materiality assessment for $150.00 – $500.00
- Drafting a complete ESG/sustainability report starting at $150.00
- Completing an LCA scope 1, 2 and 3 per ISO 14040 from $30.00
- Providing environmental/sustainability research and reporting for $20.00 – $100.00
I am not suggesting that companies must spend hundreds of thousands or more to get quality service, experienced professionals and credible output. But the Upwork postings seriously took my breath away. I’m not sure just using AI to generate generic project results of these types can be that cheap when you include human time involved in the background and administration.
ESG/sustainability leaders and staff – your budgets may be slimming down, but don’t scrimp on quality advisors/support. Consider corporate and personal reputation impacts of relying on (or publishing) erroneous or copyrighted information. When defending the work to senior leadership, boards or investors – are you comfortable explaining that your product life cycle analysis was conducted in a day by an unknown freelancer for $30? Or telling an institutional investor that your materiality assessment was produced by an unknown freelancer for $500?
I didn’t think so.
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