The environmental review is the starting point of implementing an EMS. It will enable you to have an overview and understanding of the environmental aspects and impacts of your company.

The review should include:

  • An update of the legislation you have to comply with;
  • Listing of your company's environmental impacts and quantifies them;
  • Identification of improvement opportunities;
  • Elaborates objectives and targets.

THE PURPOSE OF THE REVIEW

The environmental review is a survey of the site and its processes that will provide you with an environmental profile of your site. This will, assuming that the review is well planned and comprehensive, highlight areas of poor and good environmental performance and practice. It will also help you to implement a strategy for quantifying your impacts, and to draw a plan of actions for improvements.

The purpose of the review is to have a true picture of your company environmental impacts by:

  • Understanding the different environmental impacts your site operation has;
  • Quantifying the impact of each activities (operation), which will enable to prioritise improvement action;
  • Listing the breaches to legislation
  • Identifying opportunities for waste minimisation and energy efficiency

The review will also look at the environmental legislation that is relevant to your company and site and to therefore check compliance.

ISO 14001 and EMAS: Additional Requirements

ISO 14001 does not require an environmental review, but an analysis of environmental effect should be undertaken.

EMAS request a documented Environmental Effects Review.

IMPACTS/EFFECTS AND ASPECTS: What are they?

Impacts, aspects and effects are three terms often associated with EMS' and can be defined simply as:

Environmental aspect: any business activity that may have an impact on the environment such as emission, noise, energy use?.

Environmental impact/effect: the change that actually takes place in the environment because of the action of the aspects. Impact might include toxicity due to an emission, natural depletion due to energy use, or nuisance or habitat disruption due to noise.

COLLECTING DATA

The environmental review should be considered as a building block for the entire EMS. Setting objectives and targets (see Section 6) are reliant upon the collection and analysis of the data gathered during this time. This will enable effects to be quantified and prioritised. IF YOU CANNOT MEASURE SOMETHING, IT CAN NOT BE MANAGED.

Worksheets 3 and 4 can be used in this data gathering and analysis stages of the review and should be used to compliment one another.

Worksheet a highlights the relevant documents that are necessary in establishing your company's environmental effects. It may be the case here that all of this information is not relevant, or that your company does not have it. This Worksheet should be used by the Management Representative (MR) as a guide during the process of data gathering for the environmental review. All of the documents collected should be filed as records.

Worksheet b can be used by the MR to collect together the information needed for the environmental review. To make sure that the figures in Worksheet 4 are accurate and sufficient, it is advisable for the MR to undertake a survey of the site also, which involves interviews with various personnel.

This worksheet is divided into the following sections: (although, you may wish to add additional sections such as transport and product design. You should therefore make a copy as an extra page to include other sections).

  • Site
  • Utilities (water, electricity, gas, fuel)
  • Raw materials
  • Aqueous effluents
  • Emissions to atmosphere
  • Solid wastes

The information gathered by the MR is also used to:

  • Identify any areas where environmental legislation/regulations are being breached
  • Identify any breaches in consent/permit/authorisation conditions
  • Identify areas where management control can be improved
  • Look at current work practices and identify areas of improvement
  • Use past incidents as a guide to improving future performance

The worksheets in the following sections are completed examples, blank forms for you to fill in are located within Appendix.6