Environment ambassador
In order to shake things up on the environmental front, VINCI Energies is looking to speed up information flow by forming a global network of its environmental managers. In Portugal, this responsibility has been assigned to Cátia Margarido, whose role is to build environmental awareness among VINCI Energies employees and to encourage them to take action.
Cátia Margarido has been head of environment at VINCI Energies Portugal since January 2022. Her work involves informing, educating and engaging with the 2,000 or so employees that make up VINCI Energies in Portugal on the subject of environmental protection. “My role is to promote and develop climate action, circular economy and biodiversity actions,” she explains. “Together with Portugal’s CEO, we set the strategy to be followed and apply it in two ways. First, by organising cross-cutting activities with the various VINCI Energies business lines. And second, by supporting the initiatives taken in the three pillars by each of our subsidiaries.”
There are plenty of projects in the pipeline for Cátia Margarido: publishing a report on VINCI Energies Portugal’s sustainable development activities, organising Environment Day, be part of working groups that tackle biodiversity and circular economy issues, engaging with VINCI Energies Portugal suppliers to motivate them to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and setting up schemes to cut the emissions of VINCI Energies’ own Portuguese business units.
Cátia believes the main quality required for the job is “the ability to interact with people from different backgrounds, raising their awareness of environmental topics and encouraging them to change their behaviours. It is harder to shake things up in this field than in areas like occupational health and safety, despite the fact that the impact of climate change is becoming increasingly tangible for everyone.”
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