Environmental Management System

ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS (EMS)

An Environmental Management System (EMS) is a tool for running the impacts of an organisation’s activity of the environment. It provides a structure of approach of planning and applying environmental protection measures.

It is also a structural system designed to help organisations bring about their environmental performance caused by their activities, products and services. An Environmental Management System provides structure to the environmental management and covers areas such as training, record management, inspection, intentions and policies. Most organisations will have systems for managing their human resources, business purposes and finances as well as occupational health and safety and security.

It provides a formal way for the organisations top management to express commitment to environmental management and improvement. An EMS also provides a way for organisations to plan for and reveal steps that have been taken to reduce or prevent environmental harm from happening as a result of the organisations operations. An EMS also requires the organisation to evaluate how it meets its legal and other requirements relating to its environmental aspects.

In the development of an environmental management system, an organisation must familiarise the documentation to suit its particular conditions, then increase the documentation with further documented operational controls considered necessary and faithfully implement the processes and controls described by the documentation.

An Environmental Management System will work more effectively if it is planned to work in line with an organisation’s existing systems and developments, such

Before an organisation can bring about its environmental issues, it needs to identify how it co-operates with the environment. The standard uses some specific terms in this process. Environmental features are elements of an organisation’s activities, products and services that can interact with the environment that can either have a negative or positive environmental impact.

Implementation

This is the identification of the actual and possible environmental effects, how the organisation co-operates with the environment and other requirements. Resources typically include people, specialised skills and knowledge, organisational infrastructure, technology and money. Various positions in an organisation may have roles, responsibilities and experts for managing environmental aspects and the environmental management system. The standard requires these roles, responsibilities and authorities to be documented and communicated.

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