The environment is no longer just the air we breath, or the world we live in. It has become a critical requirement for businesses to address the environment in order to maintain customers and to exist in an ever more demanding global economy. To face such development, a company needs to adopt its overall management approaching immediate and long-term impacts of its products, services and processes on the environment. It needs to set up an environmental policy supported by the top management and a system to manage and improve its environmental performance.

A tool for doing so is an Environmental Management System (EMS). It is a continual cycle of planning, implementing, reviewing and improving the processes and actions that an organisation undertakes to meet its business and environmental goals. Various schemes exist. Most of them are built on a "Plan, Do, Check, Act" model, which leads to continual improvement based upon first developing an environmental policy, planning the EMS, and then implementing it:

1.Plan: Planning and identifying environmental aspects and establishing goals 2.Do: Implementing, training and operational controls 3.Check: Checking, monitoring and corrective action 4.Act: Reviewing, progress reviews and acting to make needed changes to the EMS

EMSs can result in both business and environmental benefits. It should include the following aspects:

• An environmental policy supported by top management.
• Identification of environmental aspects and significant impacts.
• Identification of legal and other requirements.
• Environmental goals, objectives, and targets that support the policy.
• An environmental management programme.
• Definition of roles, responsibilities, and authorities.
• Training and awareness procedures.
• Process for communication of the EMS to all interested parties.
• Document and operational control procedures.
• Procedures for emergency response.
• Procedures for monitoring and measuring operations that can have a significant impact on the environment.
• Procedures to correct non-conformance.
• Record management procedures.
• A program for auditing and corrective action.
• Procedures for management review.

In this section:

ISO 14001
EMAS