Tiffany Wong: Closing the Loop
Tell us about yourself.
I’m a Hong Kong-born Canadian and I immigrated to Calgary when I was 7 years old. At that time, my mom stayed back to hold a steady income for the family while my dad took my brother and I to start a new life in Canada. We didn’t have much and I remember vividly how tough it was for my dad. His English wasn’t great, and he was actively job seeking while figuring out how to be a parent. The three of us stayed in a one-bedroom apartment, and with the limited space, we had to be creative with our sleeping arrangements. We ended up putting two twin size beds side by side – my dad would sleep in the middle (between my brother and I), stuffing the crack with a blanket to make it a little more comfortable. When my parents bought their first house in Canada, one of those twin-size beds came with me, and it’s the same bed that I slept in all throughout university. I’ve watched my parents work hard and show that with a lot of determination and grit, anything, even the most ambitious and seemingly impossible goal, is always possible. It’s this same mentality that I’ve taken on in both my career and my life.
Today, I’m an Engineer working as a Lead Consultant for a Canadian sustainability firm. At AFARA, we specialize in the math, science, and economics of sustainability and I empower leaders to make decisions with data and models. For the past few years, I’ve been focused on pathways to decarbonization and plastics circularity. I’ve built marginal abatement cost (MAC) curves to prioritize emission reduction opportunities for heavy emitters in Canada, recognizing the evolving landscape for carbon price and the electrical grid. I’ve helped clients explore different possible futures using climate scenarios to understand risks and opportunities of different actions (or inactions). Beyond the energy sector, working on plastics circularity has given me an opportunity to engage with 75+ chemical recycling technology providers globally who are innovating on new recycling solutions to bring post-consumer plastics back into the supply chain. I’ve studied how plastics are produced, used, and recycled around the world and built economic models to understand how new advanced recycling solutions can compete with virgin plastics made from petrochemical feedstocks (such as natural gas and crude oil) today.
Outside of work, I am a fashion and make up enthusiast, a recreational boxer, and an avid traveller. On my last trip, I spent a month backpacking in Morocco, Malta, and Sicily.
How did you get into the field of sustainability?
I’ve always been subconsciously drawn to sustainability. When I was little, I had a catchphrase – “I don’t want it, do you want it?” I would use it in every context possible, but mostly with food. In response, I often got eye rolls from others as though I was giving them my garbage. Looking back, that catchphrase innocently stemmed from my desire to minimize waste and be resourceful.
As I got older, I was able to start putting this subconscious into words and it led me to the word ‘sustainability’. I had an internship with ConocoPhillips and it became very clear to me that I was not passionate about what I was doing there: modelling oil reservoirs and making well spacing recommendations to plan for future drillings. At the time, I was too afraid to leave the industry, and I figured it would be best to pivot into environmental stewardship and energy efficiency teams within the oil and gas industry. I spent countless hours networking during my 16 months with the company and I managed to meet a slew of interesting people – air emissions specialists, water resource experts, and environmental stewardship managers, just to name a few.
Things didn’t turn out the way I planned and surprisingly, the economic downturn in Calgary was a blessing in disguise for me. With no Engineer-In-Training (EIT) position lined up, it forced me out of my comfort zone and made me evaluate where I wanted to take my career. After half a year on a research placement in Germany and another half working at Hollister (the clothing company), I landed my first post-grad engineering job at AFARA, which was called Oil & Gas Sustainability at the time. It felt like the perfect transition, given the name of the company. I also felt like a pioneer among my peers, given that no one else from my class was working in a similar position, and sustainability was still relatively nascent in 2017 across Canada, especially in the energy industry.
There were many moments where I would feel like I “wasted” my education – I wasn’t practicing technical skills I learned in engineering, like heat transfer or fluid dynamics. What I’ve come to realize is that my education is the very reason I’m on the sustainability journey. In fact, one of the reasons I’ve been able to become an expert in plastics circularity is because of my background with petroleum. Petrochemicals are the building blocks for virgin plastics and being able to understand the techno-economic data gave me a baseline for what mechanically and chemically recycled plastics are up against. My education in chemical and petroleum engineering was a crucial stepping stone, and in hindsight, there hasn’t been a straighter path in my sustainability career.
Why do you think diversity in sustainability is important?
There won’t be a silver bullet solution to a sustainable and prosperous future. What we need to do in North America is going to be very different from what we need to do in Asia. To paraphrase the director of IEA: “first, different countries start this race from different starting points, there is a difference between the rich countries and the emerging countries; second, the race is not between the countries, but against time; and third, unless all the governments finish the race, nobody can win.” Although he’s speaking specifically about the pathway to net zero emissions, it’s a philosophy that carries through to all sustainability issues.
Sustainability can only be achieved if we are all in on it. Part of this means being inclusive and equitable in our conversations. In my 4+ years at AFARA, it’s been disappointing to see the decision makers in the room, often Steering Committees formed with my clients, are predominantly white males. I was often the only female, and most of the time, the only Asian. We need to change this and make sure there is diversity and equal representation as we tackle the world’s biggest challenges together.
What sustainability issues are you most concerned about and why?
I’m most concerned by the pace of change, particularly on the topic of waste. When I hear stories and see the data related to our consumption and production behaviour, I am shaken to the core thinking about the scale of this problem. And it’s not just plastics – it’s textiles, food, electronics, and so much more. In first-world countries, we have taken abundance for granted and we’ve become desensitized to how wasteful we are. I challenge everyone to do a little experiment and collect their waste for a week – I bet you’ll be surprised, both by the volume and by how little could actually be recycled or upcycled. In Canada, we recycle less than 10% of our plastics. Interestingly, even if we ramp up efforts to collect more plastics for recycling, Canada’s infrastructure is only capable of recycling ~17% of the plastic waste we generate annually. We simply do not have the capacity in our infrastructure to manage our plastic waste today beyond landfilling and incineration. In Toronto, the largest city in Canada, compostable and biodegradable items belong in the garbage bin because the infrastructure for The Green Bin program can’t handle these types of materials. Toronto’s infrastructure uses anaerobic digestion technology rather than traditional composting methods which means the infrastructure was designed primarily to handle food waste and some fibre/paper products. Despite all our efforts with upstream innovation to design new ecofriendly packaging, we cannot achieve a true circular economy until we expand our recycling infrastructure and retrofit our existing facilities.
“Even though there’s a lot of momentum for sustainability right now, I worry that we’re not acting quickly enough and as aggressively as we need to. It’s an uphill battle and we are fighting the effects that have accumulated over the last hundred years. We pat ourselves on the back every time we make an investment towards new recycling efforts, not recognizing the problem continues to grow at a faster pace. The harsh reality is that every year that we do not achieve circularity, we are falling behind.”
It’s no secret that we are trending towards more plastic than fish in the world's oceans by 2050. This means our work has been cut out for us: we need to go beyond collecting and recycling 100% of the plastics we produce and simultaneously tackle the plastics that have already leaked into the environment. Collecting and recycling 100% of our plastics will only be possible when consumers recycle correctly, and we have built out our recycling infrastructure to manage 100% of the plastics we produce. Tackling plastics that have leaked into the environment will require new technology and innovation to mine oceans and landfills to collect plastic waste for recycling. My hope is to see chemical recycling technologies scale, both plastics-to-plastics and plastics-to-fuels, so that plastic waste can be viewed as a feedstock and we can reduce our reliance on oil and gas resources to produce plastics and fuels.
Do you have a mentor? How has your mentor helped you in your career or personal growth?
Surprisingly, no – or at least, not formally. Although I don’t have a mentor now, I’ve never found that my personal and professional growth was held back. I think what’s worked well for me is networking and being exposed to different people from all walks of life and experiences. By observing their career trajectories, their values, their lifestyles, etc., I’ve discovered what I like and what I don’t like. It’s the multitude of people I connect with that allow me to pull inspiration and paint a picture of who I want to become. Of course, this is a dynamic and evergreen process. I’m constantly fine tuning the vision for my future and making sure I’m spending my time on the things that matter.
What quote do you most live by and why?
“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” — Maya Angelou.
I love this quote because we’re always working with partial, incomplete information. It’s a quote that keeps me moving forward and the reminder I need to be bold and actionable even when I don’t have all the answers. The trick is to be open-minded and be genuinely open to change when it is time to pivot or do something differently.
What advice would you give to youth or young professionals that are interested in pursuing a career in sustainability?
I’ll keep this short and sweet. Don’t wait to land the perfect job – take a good job and pave your own path. Create and discover your own opportunities. Every industry in the next few years will start taking a hard look at embedding sustainability into their business. If you understand the industry, you’ll already be ahead of everyone else.