‘Sustainability is central to AVK’s mission, and I recognise the responsibilities we have as a business to contribute to a sustainable future for our society’, our CEO, Ben Pritchard, affirmed in a recent interview.
With sustainability, there is no ‘silver bullet’, he says, and it isn’t a ‘one-time effort’. Rather, sustainability is a ‘continuous journey’ that we embrace as ‘a core responsibility’.
When it comes to sustainability, the industry needs new mindsets. This must include Generation Z.
In this final of a series of articles based on interviews with AVK Gen Z professionals who are at or near the start of their professional careers, we ask Megan O’Connor, Lead CAD Engineer, Filippos van Ryswyk, Mechanical Engineer, Conor Tillett and Austin Warriner, both AVK Trainee Generator Engineers what sustainability means at work, to them as individuals and more broadly.
Our Gen Z interviewees each flagged clear ideas they see as key to progress in the field of sustainability. These span adaptability, striking a balance, and collective action.
Gen Z and their investment in sustainability
Gen Z are fully invested in sustainability. They are acutely aware of its potential to impact and direct their life journey.
In a piece for Forbes from April 2021, Greg Petro dubbed Gen Z the ‘sustainability generation’. The appropriateness of this moniker is borne out by our interviewees, starting with Filippos who says, ‘sustainability has been in my everyday life since higher education’.
Climate anxiety in Gen Z has been widespread for several years as evidenced in a major multinational 2021 climate change study carried out by medical journal The Lancet which found 75% of those surveyed agreed with the statement, ‘the future is frightening’.
‘When I’m old and I’ve got kids’, says Conor, ‘I don’t want them to grow up in a world where they’re worrying about natural disasters becoming more of a thing, or climate change ruining the planet.’
Schools are at the root of much of Gen Z’s environmental conscientiousness. Like Filippos, Austin recalls sustainability’s prime place in his geography lessons, and remarks that it is ‘becoming more and more important in life’.
At first look much of Gen Z’s climate anxiety is directed towards the past and negative feelings for the actions of previous generations such as Baby Boomers. As a way of approaching climate change, this focus on sustainability has the potential to moderate some of this doomerism, as it offers a solution-oriented outlook on the environmental crisis. When asked directly about tackling climate change and questioned about sustainability, Gen Z looks to the future.
How sustainability can be achieved, and the measures to be implemented
This is illustrated by several of our interviewees’ definitions of sustainability – in the context of working for AVK, how we operate and the wider data centre industry.
Filippos says the goal and the challenge of sustainability is a matter of ‘future-proofing’.
He suggests that ‘the aim is to get a 25-year lifespan for technology’, with reference to the paired advancements in AI and how we ensure AI is cooled efficiently using the lowest amount of power. For Filippos, the target of sustainability, and the means of reaching it, can be summed up in a few words: ‘it’s to design smart and use less to last longer’.
‘There are always changes, that’s where smart design plays a role. It’s often a matter of anticipating future connections based on current forecasts.’
‘We will have ‘X’ type implementation in the future. So, we need to make the space to accommodate for it now. That’s what’s considered in many projects for data centres that we’re involved in.’
‘At AVK we have a lot of resources, which we’re very fortunate to have in order to be able to deliver that infrastructure in a changing environment.’
Whether introducing Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO – a low carbon, low emission, fossil free fuel) as an engine energy source, or ‘working to develop gas generation systems designed to run on future renewable fuels, such as biogas and hydrogen’, AVK is committed to sustainability as a goal to be pursued by realistic means.
Both Megan and Austin put the emphasis on balance. For Austin, the balance ought to be between the ‘economic, social and environmental aspects’ of sustainability, while for Megan it is a matter of sustaining ‘the resources that you’re using while also sustaining or maintaining’ the environments from which those resources are taken, ‘without tipping the scales too much’.
In Conor’s definition, ‘sustainability is trying to maintain something together to last over a long period.’ But he also places an accent on sustainability as a shared responsibility: it entails ‘working as a collective, either a team or a group or a company’.
Megan concurs that ‘when it comes to sustainability, an individual person can only contribute so much. A big part of helping solve this issue we’ve got going on is having the big companies contribute.’
Career and life choices – the importance of sustainability to Gen Z workers
The question of how companies ought to confront the task of sustainability is, for Gen Z workers, an important one.
Of the 23,000+ participants in Deloitte’s 2025 Gen Z and Millennial survey, 70% considered ‘a company’s environmental credential or policies to be very/somewhat important when evaluating a potential employer.’ It found 23% of Gen Z research a company’s ‘environmental impact or policies’ before ‘accepting a job’. This concern carries over from pre-employment to employment: 15% of Gen Z having changed jobs due to concerns about their company’s ‘environmental impact’.
A survey conducted by The HR Director in 2023 showed that 48% of Gen Z workers ‘would consider leaving a job that didn’t walk the talk in its promises on sustainability’. Were a company to keep true to its sustainability promises, 23% of Gen Z workers claimed that they would not just stay on as employees but even take a ‘significant reduction in pay’. When it comes to leaving companies which are insufficiently green, two thirds of Gen Z workers say that they would ‘accept a job on lower pay to work for a more ethical or environmentally active organisation’.
Companies that set out clear sustainability strategies with targets are more likely to succeed in attracting and keeping young talent.
Pritchard again: ‘Leading companies within the industry would be doing themselves a disservice if they fail to adopt sustainability as a target and to follow through with their commitments.’
As reported in People Management, ‘tangible actions’ are what matter: ‘merely making statements without implementing internal policy changes and actively working to reduce carbon emissions can be seen as superficial and lacking credibility or, worse, as greenwashing’.
Lead CAD Engineer Megan O’Connor, considered some of the sustainability strategies which companies like AVK are implementing. ‘At AVK, we’ve started reporting on various projects showing our emissions and showing the ways we’re trying to help lower the carbon footprint. I think there are certain things we can influence as a company, such as looking at the equipment that we’re using or the suppliers we’re using.’
Once again, collective action is what matters. With impact reports, ‘we’d have to rely on other companies, such as our suppliers. It is a journey to make a report to make sure everyone that we’re working with on a particular project also wants to be completely transparent.’
Taking collective action is not just an ideal which Gen Z wants their workplace to live up to. It is also the way in which much of Gen Z’s environmentalism manifests itself.
More than any other generation, Gen Z engage in social activism about climate change, on small and large scales.
For example, one consequence of Gen Z’s climate change awareness is a decline in the number of licensed drivers. A YouGov Global Profiles (June 2023) found that 56% of the Gen Z cohort they surveyed believe that we should drive less for environmental reasons.
However, survey findings reflect the sheer complexity of how talking sustainability and acting sustainably present difficult choices. According to a survey by the Department for Transport, the cost of lessons was found to be the most common reason for the decline in the number of drivers.
