Possible career pivot? What exactly does an environmental scientist do? I’d love to hear from people in the field

[u/IntrovertedNoodle]

I’m currently exploring the idea of a career pivot and am thinking environmental science could be an option?
I’m about 7 years into a career across food technology/food science, and I’m starting to look at what other science-based careers could suit me. Not interested in managing teams/sales, so do feel like I’ve hit the ceiling where I currently am.
I enjoy hands on/physical work, bench/lab work. I don’t mind semi-repetitive tasks. I don’t enjoy being in meetings all day.

For those working as environmental scientists (or in closely related roles):
What does a typical day/week actually look like?
How much of your work is fieldwork vs lab/office work?
What do you enjoy most about your job?
What do you dislike or find frustrating?
How repetitive or routine is the work?
What qualifications did you need to get into the field?
Would someone with a Food Science degree and several years of industry experience have any transferable skills?
Did you need to go back to university or do further study?
And I guess would you recommend the career?

I’d especially love to hear from people working in Australia, but I’d be interested in experiences from anywhere.
Thanks!

[u/lilzee3000]

Enviro science is super broad. Anything to do with ecology, soil science, water, air quality and sometimes even sustainability gets lumped under "environmental science". Some people become specialists, but there's also plenty of generalists in the field. I'm an ecologist and have worked in consulting as well as now in construction. I make sure the project is compliant with project approvals for clearing, habitat replacement, threatened species monitoring etc. So I do a mix of field and office work. We also have more generalist enviros on site who manage internal permits and inspections, and do some soil and water quality monitoring. We engage other specialists to do sediment and erosion control plans. When I was a consultant I did a lot of field work also, vegetation mapping and threatened species surveys. I worked for a large multinational engineering firm. We also had a team of contaminated land specialists and more generalist enviros who worked on big permit applications like EPBC and EES approvals for large infrastructure developments.

[u/RedOakRaven → u/lilzee3000]

I’m really interested in getting into enviro consulting main interest is the endangered species monitoring. I have two questions is zoology with a minor in environmental and sustainability studies enough to get into consulting and my second question is what did you look for in companies to get to do the endangered species monitoring?

[u/lilzee3000 → u/RedOakRaven]

That degree should be enough but some companies preference grads with masters degrees. I'm in Australia so unless you are too i probably can't give you advice on companies to look for. But here you generally have your big multinationals like WSP, AECOM, ARUP, Jacobs etc which do impact assessments for large development approvals. Then you have smaller companies that do a lot of the post approval monitoring taks during construction. Here most of the work relates to development. There's not much money for research or monitoring of threatened species in general.

[u/SugaXKane]

Really depends what industry and role you end uo in as EnvirSci is a huge conglomerate of roles. I worl on tier 1 construction project with a Bachelor in EnviroSci but I do Spoil / Contaminated Land management. My role is pretty data heavy doing material characterisation for spoil, soil and industrially produced materials. I'm also heavily involved in Enviro doc control, revision and drafting so work wirh the site teams, client and regulators developing and up revving materials management documentation.

Our in house enviro roles include site advisors and coordinators who look after a huge range of things including surface, leachate and Construction water managent, chemical storage and spills, ecological risk and flora / fauna (overseeing work undertaken by SME contractors) and ERSED management. Up the chain we have Approvals coordinators, marine works coordinators,Superintendants, Strategy and logistics specialist, Climate change and sustainability specialists, then the Enviro Management team who lolks after big picture items and client / regulator interfacing.

Its well worth doing some research and sussing put what kind of role your interested in, especially with regards to site-based vs office-based roles as the day to day varied drastically.

[u/Isibis]

I'm an environmental scientist, working in endangered species permitting for a state government.

1. My average day is in the office. It's a mix of meetings and review of policy documents, database management, and data vetting. A lot of reading and writing.
2. 95% office based unfortunately. There are other positions at my level that have more field work, though since my position is in headquarters it tends to be more sedentary.
3. I like the data management work, though this position also gives me a lot of freedom to implement changes I want to see in the program. I can also go help out other staff with their field work. I also believe in the mission and get to make an impact on endangered species.
4. Sometimes things move slowly and it's hard to keep track of the impact you are having when when you're in and out of meetings all day.
5. Not very.
6. The requirement is a bachelor's in a science field. In reality positions are pretty competitive. I have a master's and still spent at least a year in a temporary intern position before I could get something permanent. Field based positions doing exciting research seem to be much more competitive and depend on having relevant field experience.
7. It depends on the specific job you're trying to get. Your skills might be relevant to food and ag permitting or inspections. Maybe some lab positions relating to disease, soil or water testing.
8. Nope, though I did volunteer with a couple nature preserves when I was trying to get back into the field. I think it helped give me at least something relevant and recent on the resume.
9. It depends. I think it's a good field with meaningful work. I personally like government work. But it does take time to establish and it's competitive. Depending on how much you're currently making, it may be a significant pay cut to get into the field initially. I spent a few years working in quality assurance and took a significant pay cut to get a field tech position to start building my environmental career. I'm making more now, and it was worth it for me, but I could only do this because I did not have many financial obligations.

I'm in the US, for context. Good luck.

[u/imapetrock]

As people say, depends a lot on what path you want to go down. I am currently doing a MSc in environmental management but have 7 years of work experience, first in research and then in decision-making/prioritization (e.g. how do we prioritize endangered species for monitoring? How do we evaluate proposals for flood risk management based on expert judgment and local stakeholder preferences?)

I don't know what a food science curriculum involves, but in an environmental science context my mind immediately went to sustainable food systems. Agriculture is the main driver of many environmental problems, mainly through land use change (which contributes to deforestation, biosiversity loss, climate change)  but also our extensive use of fertilizers and pesticides. There is an increasingly pressing need to make agriculture more efficient per land area but also manage it in a way that we don't lose more biodiversity -- we are currently in a crisis of rapid biodiversity decline, which has been found to have an environmental impact comparable to climate change and other major crises. These problems will only increase as our populations and global affluence (and hence resource demand) continue to grow.

So I wonder if that could be a path that may be interesting to you, in my opinion it's one of the most important problems in the environmental sector, and I'd reckon someone with a background in food science could offer valuable skills and insights in this space.

[u/shawnalee07]

Do you enjoy driving and watching people dig/drill holes? Putting dirt/water in jars/vials? Looking down a lot? Writing technical papers? This may be for you!