Green Jobs Overview: Environmental Health and Safety

As more and more green businesses around the world adopt sustainability plans, the need for professionals in the environmental, health, and safety (EHS) field will becoming increasingly large. Green jobs in the EHS field offer plenty of opportunities with a wide range of interests – technical jobs to health care jobs to inspection jobs to legal jobs to scientific jobs. No matter your particular interest, you’re bound to find something in the EHS field.

What is an Environmental, Health, and Safety Green Job?

So what does a green career in the EHS field look like? These individuals work to ensure that companies are compliant with local and federal safety and environmental laws in order to protect workers, property, the general public, and the environment. Many people with green jobs in the EHS field work for the government ensuring that laws and regulations are enforced. However, there are also many EHS jobs with private firms that work to design safe work spaces and stations, machinery, commercial and residential buildings, industrial processes, and so on.

In addition, many private companies are now hiring environmental, health, and safety experts to provide in-house guidance for compliance and regulatory purposes, including businesses such as insurance companies, manufacturing companies, utilities, chemical companies, and more. There are also many third-party inspection firms that provide reliable audits and reviews for the purposes of securing green certifications and seals of approval.

Green Jobs Available in the EHS Field

The types of functions performed by EHS professionals varies extensively. For instance, if you secured a green job in the EHS field, you might do any one of these types of tasks:

Provide employee education about safety and environmental regulations
Study environmental and health laws to ensure your employer was compliant with all regulations
Research processes and materials used in hazardous manufacturing situations to determine the level of the threat, clean-up regimens, and disposal requirements and costs
Work within a private company to ensure their EHS records and processes are prepared, organized, and enforced, recommending changes when necessary, and developing proprietary reference materials and technical reports
Evaluating suppliers for your company to ensure they adhere to your standards for EHS compliance
Work with a government agency to evaluate and develop spill prevention and removal regulations and corrective actions
Do on-site analysis of public environmental disasters to determine the magnitude of the situation and make recommendations for remediation
Review and evaluate applications for certification of a company or product for a green seal of approval
Use scientific research to determine the best method for disposing of hazardous medical waste

As you can see, there are many ways to find a green career as an EHS professional. EHS professionals often combine highly specialized skills such as scientific expertise, engineering expertise, and management skills. The following are some potential job titles you’ll see when applying for EHS jobs: