WorkforClimate advisor Maren Costa is one of the most influential corporate climate advocates of her time. But not that long ago she was a senior leader at Amazon, responsible for encouraging all of us to buy more stuff. In the hit Netflix doco Buy Now!, Maren shares her transformation from corporate cog to climate champion – and how the rest of us might follow suit.
Here’s a grim fact: Australians are the biggest fashion consumers in the world. We buy roughly 56 new pieces of clothing every year. That’s one item every single week, and then some.
As the new Netflix doco Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy so disarmingly reveals, this is not without consequences. Each week, 15 million pieces of discarded clothing are sent to Ghana as part of “recycling programs” around the world – an amount so unmanageable its beaches are clogged with literal mountains of textile waste.
And, here’s the clincher: this is all by design. Products are designed to expire or fall apart fast, are intentionally unrepairable and marketed and targeted at us with pinpoint accuracy thanks to the cache of information we both unwittingly (and often willingly) provide to Big Tech.
How do we know all this?
Well, in large part because of employees who want to see their workplaces take climate accountability. Employees like Maren Costa.
How Maren transformed Amazon forever
Maren Costa was part of the Amazon family. “I practically grew up there,” she says of her 15 years as the company’s first Principal User Experience Designer and a senior leader. But one conversation with her friends changed everything. Knowing Maren’s personal commitment to sustainability, they asked her how she could possibly stomach Amazon’s completely inadequate response to the climate crisis.
“I got to the point of tears, because of course I knew they were right,” Maren admits. The online retail behemoth was lagging far behind its peers. Unlike other tech giants, it had no company-wide plan, no emissions reduction targets, and no meaningful climate commitments.
In that moment, she resolved to act, even if it put her career at risk.
Rather than quit, she helped create Amazon Employees for Climate Justice (AECJ) – perhaps the most impactful employee organisation advocating for climate justice of our time. It is widely credited with unprecedented wins, such as bringing about Amazon’s long overdue Climate Pledge, Amazon’s pledge to buy 100,000 electric vans, and Jeff Bezos’s 10-billion-dollar Earth Fund. They were able to hold Amazon accountable and move them to change in ways that sanctioned internal sustainability groups, consumers, shareholders, and even politicians had not been able to. All via employee organising and strategic collective action.
In the firing line
Maren’s action ultimately came with a price: She was fired in April 2020 after AECJ organised a virtual town hall. The event aimed to connect corporate employees with warehouse workers, giving a platform to those on the front lines of Amazon’s COVID-19 response. At the time, warehouse employees were raising concerns about inadequate safety measures, including insufficient PPE, lack of social distancing, and punitive leave policies, but Amazon’s corporate spin said that everything was perfect.
Amazon’s leadership claimed that the organising activities violated company policies.
“When retaliation comes, it’s not the end of the fight – it’s a chance to show everyone why the fight matters,” says Maren. And she did just that.
Ultimately, The National Labor Relations Board filed suit against Amazon and ruled that Amazon had fired Maren illegally, a landmark decision that validated their organising efforts and set a precedent for employee activism. Amazon was required to post internally to all employees, regardless of corporate or warehouse, that they had acted illegally and that employees should understand their protected rights. Maren also won back-pay/lost wages.
Related: Meet the man who turned 10,000 Microsoft employees on to climate action
How Maren’s climate work inspired Google, Microsoft and more
AECJ’s success wasn’t just transformative for Amazon; it inspired a larger movement across the tech industry. Workers at Google, Microsoft, and other companies began organising for climate justice, showing that collective action is contagious. The organising principles used by AECJ can be adapted to any workplace, making their story a valuable resource for employee climate leaders in every industry.
These movements highlight the unique position employees hold in pushing for change. Unlike external activists, employees have direct access to decision-makers and a deep understanding of company operations, giving them a powerful platform to influence corporate behaviour. And more importantly, employees have the power to withhold their work/labor which is the leverage needed to make a company do something they are otherwise unwilling to do.
Want to learn how to build your own workplace climate action group? Check out Maren Costa's tips and advice on how she and her colleagues organised for climate action at Amazon.
The WorkforClimate Academy gives you the tools and space to take climate action in the workplace, no matter what your job title. Head here to register for the next cohort.
