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Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development
A small manufacturing company is keen to promote its activities as being sustainable. As part of this process, the management has decided to implement an EMS with a view to obtaining ISO 14001 certification. With specific reference to issues that are likely to be relevant to a small manufacturing company, discuss the role of the environmental management tools we considered in workbook 2 and explain how these environmental management tools are interrelated in terms of both data inputs/outputs and methodologies. Also, describe to what extent the EMS and the use of management tools could be seen as contributing to sustainable developments.
Interest in environmental protection and sustainable development has been increasing year by year. To meet the challenges, an Environmental Management System (EMS) is implemented. An EMS is a continuous cycle of planning, implementing, reviewing and improving the processes and actions that an organisation undertakes to meet its environmental obligations. The world's first standard for environmental management systems (EMS) BS 7750 was developed and published by the British Standards Institution (BSI) in 1992.
This later formed the basis for the ISO 14000, which was developed by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO). In 1996, ISO 14001 which establishes the requirements for an EMS was finalised. Implementation of an EMS can improve environmental performance, reduced liability, competitive advantage, reduced costs, fewer accidents, employee involvement, compliance performance, enhance management confidence, increase efficiency, improve public image, enhance customer trust, meet customer requirements and growth management.
The key to effective environmental management is the use of a systematic approach to planning, controlling, measuring and improving an organisation's environmental performance. Common aspects of an EMS are environmental policy, adequate resources, responsibilities and authorities, training, system documentation, operational controls, document control, system audits and management review. Most EMS models are based on the concept of Plan, Do, Check, Act model introduced by Shewart and Deming which emphasises the concept of continual improvement.
Some of the important EMS elements in common EMS models are discussed in detail. Most of the EMS components are inter-related (given in fig 1). The first element is the environmental policy, which is the top management's declaration of its commitment to the environment. The environmental policy serves as a foundation and vision of environmental concern by the entire organisation. The policy should relate to the company's products and services, be simple, understandable, and explicit enough to be audited. The policy is relevant to continual improvement, pollution prevention and compliance with relevant laws and regulations.
The second element is the identification of environmental aspects which are the organisation's activities, products, or services that can interact with the environment. These environmental aspects , which are called as significant environmental aspects, determine the environment objectives to be established and operational controls and actions defined later. The environmental aspects are essential to establish positive impacts on the bottom line and providing environmental improvements.
Legal and other requirements of the EMS may include federal requirements, state and local requirements, standards in locations in which the company's products/services are sold and permit conditions. These requirements should be factored into the organisation's management efforts to avoid potential costs as non-compliance can cause possible damage to the environment, revenue loss and impact on public image.
Objectives and targets establish environmental goals for the organisation in line with company policy, environmental policy, environmental impacts, the views of interested parties and other factors. This is essential to help an organisation translate purpose into action. Various EMS implementation projects for small and medium-sized companies indicate that it is best to start with a limited number of objectives and expand the list over time. Measurement of progress of achieving targets should be determined.
An Environmental Management Program is developed by planning to achieve objectives. Targets should be set by defining responsibilities for achieving goals and means and time frame for achieving them. Therefore, an Environmental Management Program acts as a road map/action plan for achieving environmental goals. Re-evaluation of the action plan and focus in continual improvement should be made.
Structure and responsibility defines effective roles and responsibilities and ensures that the top management provide resources including human resources, specialised skills, technology, and financial resources. Small and medium-sized organisations may have advantages over large ones in structuring their resources for environmental management as resource being limited; people have experience in performing multiple functions. Structure and responsibility is needed for an EMS to live up to its full potential.
Training, awareness and competency are important for awareness, motivation, commitment, skills/capability, compliance and performance as every employee can have potential impacts on the environment by generating good ideas for improvement. Training should be conducted and tracked and its effectiveness evaluated.
Establishment of internal and external communications on environmental management issues for neighbours, community groups, other interest groups, local officials, regulatory agencies and emergency responders should be effected to maintain the flow of useful and required information. Effective communication can help to motivate workforce, gain acceptance for the company's plans and efforts, explain the company's environmental policy, ensure understanding of roles and expectations, demonstrate management commitment, monitor and evaluate performance and identify potential system improvements.
EMS documentation by maintaining information on EMS and related documents should be done to provide adequate information to the people involved in the setting up of the EMS and also to external parties like customers, regulators, lending institutions, registrars and the public for better understanding.
Document control is a mechanism providing up-to-date procedures, instructions and other documents to ensure effective management of procedures and other system documents . It ensures that people are consistently performing in the right way. It is linked with EMS documentation, operational control and records.
Operational control is effected by identifying, planning and managing operations and activities in line with company policy, objectives and targets which include documented procedures to manage environmental policy, significant environmental aspects, objectives and targets and legal and other requirements. It ensures that the commitments of the environmental policy is satisfied and prevent deviations from the policy. Operational control is also needed to manage significant aspects or legal requirements.
Emergency preparedness and response is to be maintained to reduce injuries, prevent or minimize environmental impacts, protect employees and neighbours, reduce asset losses and minimize downtime. It serves as a tool to determine whether more training and revision of emergency plans and procedures is needed.
Monitoring and measurement of key activities and performance is essential to evaluate environmental performance, analyse root causes of problems, assess compliance with legal requirements, identify areas requiring corrective action, improve performance and increase efficiency. In general, is serves as an assessment of how well the system is performing and helps to manage the organisation better. Monitoring is done effectively when current and reliable data is available by proper EMS documentation and Document control.
Non-conformance and corrective and preventive action is essential to identify and investigate problems, identify root causes, identify and implement corrective and preventive actions and make sure actions are tracked and their effectiveness verified. Most EMS problems are identified by internal auditors by accessing information from operation control and monitoring and measurement.
Records are essential to demonstrate the actual implementation of the EMS designed. Records have value internally as well as over time when there is a need to provide evidence to external parties such as customers, a registrar or the public. Accurate records is also essential for a system to operate consistently. Virtually every element of the EMS can result in the generation of records as it is inter-linked.
An EMS audit is a systematic and documented verification process of objectively obtaining and evaluating evidence to confirm whether an organisation's environmental management system conforms to the environmental management system audit criteria set by the organisation. In a smaller organisation, periodic audits can be particularly valuable as managers close to the work may not often see the problems or insufficient procedures that have been developed.
Management review is the key to continual improvement and for ensuring that the EMS will continue to meet the organisation's needs over time. They also offer a great opportunity to keep the EMS efficient and cost effective. Smaller organisations often favour employee experience over written procedures and documented systems. However, personnel turnover without documented systems can stall progress. On establishment of an EMS, it is essential to evaluate how useful it is to relate to the company's policy towards sustainable development.
For any company, economic growth has been considered as a major indicator of a healthy society, but lately, the environmental cost has been recognised by the society. So there is a need to develop sustainable development a means of satisfying present needs without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet theirs. The implementation of sustainable management initiatives has been mainly a reaction to environmental pressures, legal obligations, risk management, customer demands and competition. This has lead to a change in the stakeholders interpretation of sustainable development through constraints of politics, economics, science, culture and religion.
The intent of an EMS is to facilitate a voluntary implementation of an effective management system for both sound environmental performance and also participation in environmental schemes. The design principle of an EMS is not to be a regulatory device as such, but as a regulatory device with the objective of sustainable development. To evaluate their role in sustainable development, in their current form, EMS only functions for continual improvement on environmental objectives and targets after considering regulations, effects of the products on the environment, organisational goals and views of concerned parties.
Implementing an EMS does not alter the basic obligation to comply with applicable requirements or the requirements themselves. Through compliance, they provide ways to make achievement of that end more sustainable and predictable. So EMS has emerged as a important tool in improving performance above legal minimums and widely accepted.
References.
Cascio, J., Woodside, G and Mitchell, P. (1996) ISO 14000: A guide to the New International Environmental Standards. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.
Hillary (1994) The Eco-Management and Audit Scheme: A Practical Guide. UK: Stanley Thornes (Publishers) Ltd.
IAS (1991) International Accounting Standards (2nd Edition). Vol I & II. IAS No 1-31. Copenhagen: FSRs Forlag.
International Network for Environmental Management. (2004) Your Environmental Management Tool Box, INEM. http://www.inem.org/htdocs/inem_tools.html#Anchor-ISO-11481 [12/08/2005].
Netrags. (2005) Environmental Management Systems, Netrags. http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/netregs/275207/587836/?version=1&lang=_e [14/08/2005].
Rao, P K. (2000) Sustainable Development Economics and Policy. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers.
SETAC (1991) A Technical Framework for Life-Cycle Assessment. Washington DC: SETAC.
Stapleton, P J., Glover, M A. and Davis, S P. (2nd Eds) (2001) Environmental Management Systems: An Implementation Guide for Small and Medium-Sized Organisations. NSF.
Sturn, A and Upasena, S. (1997, 1998) ISO 14001 Implementing an Environmental Management System (version 2.02, 1998). Available from: www.ellipson.com [12/08/2005].
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