Environmental management systems
Environmental management systems can be used to help reduce your environmental impacts, comply with relevant legislation, and demonstrate that you are committed to managing your environmental risks and liabilities responsibly.
In many cases, the introduction of an environmental management system can also aid cost savings.
Companies with an EMS collect data and produce an annual corporate environmental report so stakeholders can monitor their environmental performance.
EMS systems can cover issues such as transport, energy use, responsible waste disposal and recycling, and eco-purchasing, including furniture, print and cleaning fluids used.
An EMS is helpful in proving that you are going Greener Now, as it means that your company will have:
- already have identified its vision, principles of action, its environmental impacts and published its own environmental policy
- set objectives and targets for improvement
- have a mechanism for delivering those improvements
- have a reporting structure in place to report progress and monitor its environmental performance.
It is important to recognise that the environment is a management issue and not just a matter of compliance. EMS provides a practical framework within which environmental issues can be managed.
Any organisation wishing to monitor its own environmental performance should consider making a commitment to produce an externally published or, ideally, externally verified environmental report.
There are a number of standards available, around which we can model our Environmental Management System, or EMS. On the international scene there is the ISO14000 series of standards and at the European level we have EMAS, or the Eco-Management and Audit Scheme.
It is intended to provide recognition for those companies who have established a programme of environmental action designed to protect, and to continuously improve, their environmental performance.
All of the EMS standards stress the need for continuous, never ending, improvement in striving to protect the environment, not only for ourselves but for future generations to come.
