Something has shifted in how organizations think about sustainability. It's less a department now and more of a lens, one that shows up in procurement, finance, legal and risk, whether those teams asked for it or not.
Claire Purvis knows this shift from the inside. A University of Waterloo alum with a master's degree in environmental studies, she spent more than 15 years in sustainability consulting before returning as the Associate Director of the Hub for Sustainability Integration. She has led greenhouse gas inventory projects, built decarbonization plans and advised executive teams on climate risk across sectors including healthcare, manufacturing, finance and real estate. Now she brings that experience into the classroom as the assistant professor of a student consultancy course, one that reflects Waterloo's deep commitment to experiential learning.
"We will always be reminding students to save the trees and bees," she says. "But nowadays, it has to go so much further than that. We're teaching them to see and show value in being sustainable and to work across an entire organization to make sustainability actually stick."
What sets the course apart is that it's not a simulation. It puts students directly in the driver's seat, a new position for most. Each term, Purvis matches small student teams with real organizations facing real sustainability challenges. There are no predetermined answers, no written processes and no safety nets. Students show up as consultants, assess the situation and build something their client can actually use to move forward, or to evaluate next steps. The course draws undergraduate and graduate students from across disciplines, including accounting, finance and environment, and hopefully in future, engineering, planning and others.
"We teach students how to be comfortable in the grey areas while still moving forward," she says. "Sustainability is rarely a black or white issue. It's a use of judgement and a decision with the best, and perhaps limited, information we have available at the time. It's also a constantly changing landscape of politics and regulations. We're teaching our students to embrace the ambiguity and focus on building impact and driving action for their clients."
In this environment, students aren't treated as learners completing an exercise. They're treated as consultants and leaders.
LifeLabs, one of Canada's largest diagnostics companies, brought a question to the course that had previously gone unanswered: which of their two service delivery models — mobile home-care or in-clinic — produced the fewest emissions? A student team assessed the issue and helped build a calculator tool that LifeLabs will continue to use and refine.
"Working with the students forces you, in a good way, to work through to completion a project that otherwise would have likely sat on the shelf," says Stephen Vanderhorst, National Manager of Environmental Sustainability at LifeLabs.
We teach students how to be comfortable in the grey areas while still moving forward.
This course has a track record of real-world impact. In a previous iteration, students worked with a Toronto-based non-profit to help them pursue federal government funding for a sustainability initiative, opening doors the organization may not have found on its own. In a recent term, student teams tackled challenges spanning water conservation in the Town of East Gwillimbury, organics program growth for Sustainable Waterloo Region, work-from-home emissions methodology for Co-operators, and a decarbonisation strategy for Bench Brewing, each project moving clients further towards their sustainability goals and continuing to drive impact.
The experience gained by students varies depending on the client, but the demands are consistent. One team working with a municipal client on a water conservation program quickly learned that recommending the most sustainable option wasn't enough. "Every recommendation had to pass a 'but is this actually doable?' test," says Haneen Khan, an Honours Environment and Business student. "That constant reality-checking pushed our group to think beyond the ideal and seriously consider the economic, political and social realities behind municipal sustainability decision-making."
Jacob Saunders, a Sustainability and Financial Management student, found the course recalibrated something more fundamental. "We were treated as an independent consulting group," he says, "and that level of responsibility taught me how to communicate professionally and run well-structured meetings." The experience also shifted how he thinks about sustainability's role in business. "It pushed me to see sustainability not as a niche topic, but as a rapidly evolving field that touches every part of business."
For Purvis, that outcome, regardless of where a student ends up after leaving UWaterloo, is exactly the point. The goal isn't to push every graduate toward a Chief Sustainability Officer title. It's to produce graduates who pause before making a decision and who understand that every business choice carries an impact for a multitude of stakeholders; trees and butterflies included.
"You're not just writing a report or producing a business case for a client," she says. "You're working across health and safety, finance, risk management and HR to create action."
For the organizations involved, that's not a small thing. A question that sat unanswered for years gets resolved. A funding application gets off the ground. A toolkit gets handed over that an organization will actually use. In sustainability, moving the needle is progress — and these students are doing exactly that.