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Ebook Small Business Solutions Environmental Management

Thu, 08/06/2009 - 03:17 — wulan

All businesses have some impact on the environment. Even the simple act of switching on a light has some environmental impact. As a business owner or manager, it is your responsibility to ensure that whatever your level of impact, that impact is managed appropriately and minimised where possible.

This guide provides you with one way to manage the environmental impacts of your business, using an Environmental Management System. By following the five steps of this guide you will begin to implement an Environmental Management System. These steps are based on the international environmental standard ISO:14001.

An Environmental Management System provides you with a structured way of planning and implementing environment protection measures. Experience has shown businesses using an Environmental Management System gain many
benefits including:

    n improved operational efficiencies
    n cost savings
    n increase in customer satisfaction
    n new markets and customers
    n competitive advantage
    n improved business image

Many businesses are also recognising that to be sustainable, they need to take responsibility for not only their economic performance, but also their environmental and social performance. Not only will an Environmental Management System help to improve your environmental performance, often improvements will also benefit your staff, especially as many environmental hazards can cause health and safety risks to people.

There are also legal responsibilities for business owners and managers to manage their environmental impacts. Under Section 25 of the Environment Protection Act 1993, everyone has a General Environmental Duty to ìnot undertake an activity that pollutes, or might pollute, the environment unless the person takes all reasonable and practicable measures to prevent or minimise any resulting environmental harmî.

In taking all reasonable care to avoid your business causing environmental harm, your business will be able to use this reasonable care, or due diligence, as a defence should your business unwittingly cause an environmental offence. An Environmental Management System enables you to identify and control any risks to the environment before they result in harm.

It is equally important that your staff are aware and capable of identifying environmental impacts and risk situations in day to day operations.

This guide provides you with the basic information needed to start implementing an Environmental Management System for your business. An example of an environmental incident in Danís workshop is used throughout the guide to illustrate how a business may have dealt with the situation, if they had an Environmental Management System in place. (See shaded box opposite).

To track your progress we have provided a checklist of things to do. These checklist steps are also summarised in the Tool Box at the back of
the guide.

A Tool Box of useful checklists, forms and procedures are provided for you to use, copy, and modify to help you start documenting the steps you take.

Finally, along the way you may need some more detailed advice or assistance. We have included a list of useful contacts in the Tool Box.

Contents

Introduction
Step 1: Commitment and Environmental Policy
Step 2: Planning

    Identification of Aspects and Impacts
    Environmental Action Plan
    Identification of Legal Requirements

Step 3: Implementation and Operation

    Hierarchy of Controls
    Develop Procedures and Documentation
    Emergency Response

Step 4: Checking and Corrective Action

    Maintaining your Environmental Management System
    Reporting Non-conformance

Step 5: Review and Continuous Improvement

    System Review
    Continuous Improvement