Sustainability Intern

World Resources Institute

Feb 28, 2024

Applications are closed

Internship
Full-time
Off-cycle Internship
Sustainability
Washington, DC

Requirements

Pursuing or completed a bachelor’s or master’s degree in sustainability, environmental studies, architecture, graphic design, communication, business administration, management, public administration, or other similar degrees.
Experience in coordinating and holding focus-group style interviews (preferred, but not required).
Knowledgeable about the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (preferred, but not required).
Ability to present complex information in a clear and concise manner. 
Passionate about environmental sustainability 
Proficiency in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, or equivalent spreadsheet tools.
Comfortable interning remotely at home as well as in-person at the DC office.

Responsibilities

In this role, you will:
Perform research on waste (recycling, composting, and landfill) practices for countries, regions, and cities with WRI offices.
Coordinate and lead interviews with operations staff in WRI offices to discuss waste practices, processes, and data availability for the annual GHG inventory.
Create waste audit materials to support WRI offices to conduct their own waste audit events (i.e. WRI Brasil, WRI Europe including (The Hague and London)).
Additional projects may include performing a comparative literature review on the existing methodology(ies) on calculating work from home (WFH) GHG emissions and current (if any), organizations reporting on WFH emissions.
You will be supported by the Sustainability Core Team, consisting of staff located in WRI’s US and Europe offices. You will also coordinate with a network of Sustainability Champions from WRI’s country offices, including WRI Africa, WRI Brasil, WRI Mexico, WRI India, WRI Indonesia, and WRI China. You will report to a senior member of the team.
Internship Learning Outcomes:
Learn how to perform open-ended research with a global perspective and use the research to inform project design and implementation.
Gain skills in coordinating and conducting focus-group style interviews.
Engage with staff from various departments and WRI offices to understand sustainable operations.
Learn about greenhouse gas emissions inventories, including the Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s approach to scope 3, category 5 and scope 3, category 7.
Update waste audit guidance, implementation, and tracking materials for education and awareness-building.
Support leading a waste audit of the DC office to educate and engage with staff on recycling, composting, and landfill best practices.
Learn how to research emerging sustainability topics and develop a working-paper style literature review.
Learn about WRI’s Sustainability Initiative and other organizations approaches to calculating Scope 3, Category 7 for commute and WFH emissions.
Attend weekly global sustainability core team meetings, typically early in the morning (EDT) to accommodate various time zones.

World Resources Institute

https://www.linkedin.com/company/world-resources-institute/

Energy

Industry

1001-5000

Employees

1982

Founded Year

Mission & Purpose

WRI's mission is to move human society to live in ways that protect Earth’s environment and its capacity to provide for the needs and aspirations of current and future generations. We organize our work around six critical goals that the world must achieve this decade in order to secure a sustainable future: Climate: Protect communities and natural ecosystems from damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions, and generate opportunities for people by catalyzing a global transition to a low-carbon economy. Energy: Drive the scale-up of clean, affordable power systems throughout the world to deliver sustainable socio-economic development. Food: Ensure the world’s food systems reduce their impact on the environment, drive economic opportunity, and sustainably feed 9.6 billion people by 2050. Forests: Alleviate poverty, enhance food security, conserve biodiversity, and mitigate climate change by reducing forest loss and restoring productivity to degraded, deforested lands. Water: Achieve a water-secure future by mapping, measuring, and mitigating global water risks. Cities and Transport: Improve quality of life in cities by developing and scaling environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable urban and transport solutions. We design solutions for and analyze these six critical goals through the lenses of our three Centers of Excellence which focus on Governance, Business and Finance.