Environmental Management Systems

A Step-by-Step Guide to Implementation and Maintenance

Christopher Sheldon, Mark Yoxon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781844072576
• eBook ISBN: 9781136566653
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

This third edition of Sheldon and Yoxon's authoritative Environmental Management Systems (previously entitled Installing Environmental Management Systems) has been extensively revised to cover changes in international standards and other related developments in the field such as British Standard BS 8555. Drawing on the authors' extensive hands-on experience in both implementing and training others, it describes how such systems can be used to prioritize actions and resources, increase efficiency, minimize costs and lead to better, more informed decision making.

Set out in a straightforward series of steps, it cuts through the jargon and demolishes the myths that surround this important management tool. The authors explain the importance of carrying out an initial environmental review, identifying cause and effect, understanding legislative and regulatory issues, developing a policy and defining objectives and targets. They also describe how to design an effective environmental management programme and implement a successful audit and review. Clear and concise, and packed with helpful practical examples and insider tips, it has become the standard manual for managers and consultants at all levels.

1

Introduction: How to Use This Book

Is this book for me?

Unless you're the sort of person who thinks that the Introduction in a book is a waste of paper, then you're probably dipping into these pages wondering if this is going to be a useful book or not. The title probably gave you a hefty clue, so it's more than likely that you are going to be interested in environmental management systems (EMS), their installation, implementation and maintenance. It's possible that you've actually got the job of installing one, running, updating or perhaps training people who have to do the job themselves. Whatever your reason for picking up this handbook, we guarantee you're going to find something useful and/or usable in it.

Over the last 15 years, we've had the privilege of observing a lot of managers from a wide variety of functions grappling with environmental management while they attended training courses that we were running on the subject. The first day always seems to be the hardest; a lot of new information to take in, some of it politely described to us as ‘very dry indeed’. Then on the second day, after a few exercises, delegates begin to act with more confidence around the subject, mainly because they've seen just how far their own wisdom can actually take them. Invariably, by the third day we can hardly hear ourselves think for the sound of open palms smiting foreheads (delegates smiting their own foreheads you understand, not each other's) as they ‘get it’. In training circles, it's known as the ‘Aha! factor’; that blissful moment when all the fragments of information fall into a pattern and the subject begins to make sense. This book tries to capture some of those ‘Aha!’ moments, and pass them on to those that need them.

In this opening chapter, to clear the ground, we're going to answer some of the basic questions about EMS, their implementation and running, and lay out the aims of this book and the way we're going to approach the subject. This will let you check the level of your understanding, maybe challenge a few of your assumptions, and reveal some of ours. Mainly though, it'll ensure that you haven't bought this book thinking that it's something to do with garden design. If you haven't slapped your forehead once by Chapter 4, then you probably skipped this introduction.

What this introduction covers

• What is environmental management?

• Why bother with it?

• How does it work with environmental regulation?

• What is an environmental management system?

• How will your culture affect your systems?

• Why is sustainability development important to my organization?

• How to get the best from this book

What is environmental management?

If financial management is managing the finances of a company, and quality management is managing the quality of its products and processes, then it stands to reason that environmental management is managing the environment that the company operates in. Well . . . yes and no.

It's been a steep learning curve, but most of us now accept that everything we do affects the environment. It even extends down to the way our bodies are dealt with after death. To illustrate the point, a local authority discovered during a review of its environmental effects that its most significant impact on the environment was the air emission from the crematorium chimney. It's reputed that the report went on to suggest a return to landfill!

Obviously, some effects are bigger than others (one person breathing, say, is less of an impact than making steel), yet each of these effects is interrelated. That relationship can sometimes disperse the impact and lessen it, while in other cases it can multiply the strength of the impact in a cumulative manner. In one sense, it is true that the whole interaction of individuals and the environment is so complicated that we have to accept that we cannot control or ‘manage’ the effects. We may never be in a position to manage something as complex as a planetary ecosystem without unforeseen results and/or problems arising. Managing the environment is thus a contradiction in terms, even without the added complexity of ideas like managing for sustainability.

Accepting this, environmental management does not seek to manage the environment directly. Instead, it concentrates on the more indirect, but nonetheless effective, route of managing an organization's activities that give rise to impacts upon the environment. This is more than playing games with words just for the fun of it. The semantics are important. The focus of the work becomes the interaction between the organization and the environment, and the rather fluid interface between the two. It is the environmental aspects (as opposed to the financial or quality aspects) of an organization's activities, products and services that are the focus of management.

Why bother with it?

All biological organisms rely for their survival on the effectiveness of their feedback loops to give them clear and accurate information on the world around them. Evolution displays a tendency over time to favour those organisms with better feedback loops. It appears that the more one can sense, the better the chance of survival. Corporate organisms display the same characteristics as their biological relations.

A management system can be seen as a way of improving (or even establishing) these feedback loops in an organization. An EMS specifically improves the feedback about a constantly evolving area: environmental protection. Continuing social awareness concerning the state of our environment is another aspect of ‘sensitization’ caused by better feedback loops. Obviously the more finely attuned an organization is to new developments, the better placed it is to react, to plan and to improve ahead of any legal or market requirements. An additional benefit to corporate organisms is that the quality of the information received and acted upon is directly related to the efficient use of resources in meeting the new demands. Priorities vary according to the circumstances of the organization and its relationship with its public.

An EMS can help to define circumstances of which others may not even be aware, keeping the more sensitive organization continually at the head of the corporate food chain. How much do you need to know about environmental issues? More than your competitors; and you only get better knowledge from better feedback loops.

How does it work with environmental regulation?

One argument which is heard quite frequently is that environmental management is not necessary if one is already following all the relevant environmental regulations that apply to the site or the operations in question. This is specious, much akin to saying financial management is not necessary if you're paying all the right taxes. In order to make sense of how environmental issues have changed our understanding of business management, one first has to appreciate where regulation leaves off and self determination (in terms of voluntary self-regulation) starts.

Two types of mechanisms have evolved in society in order to express approval or disapproval. One is the legislature and associated regulations; the other is a variety of instruments loosely grouped under the heading of ‘the market’. In societies where ‘command and control’ of environmental impacts is the leading principle, the law finds expression through a dense frame work of regulations. These not only determine specific baseline environmental performance parameters but may also seek to be quite prescriptive as to how that performance will be achieved. The more regulations there are, the less room there is for organizational management to use alternative methods to achieve the same ends. It also means that ‘environmental’ acceptability is being closely defined by the representatives of democracy, rather than by the individuals of that democracy.

Using the market as a feedback mechanism is favoured by some national policy makers as a more fluid response to such an uncertain area as environmental issues, allowing organizations more flexibility in the way they meet agreed targets. As a result, it is incumbent upon individual organizations to take account directly of the expressed preferences of their own market, while still using the law as a baseline for performance standards.

Self-regulation (industry agreeing to work to methods and standards beyond legal requirements) can be seen as one attempt to fill the credibility gap between the market and the legislative framework; the gap between what the people's representatives have a mandate to ensure, and what the people themselves want. The expression of an individual person is a markedly more complex set of signals to read and as a result is more open to interpretation. Thus, individuals who have differing expectations of what they require from an organization can be identified as being members of different groups known collectively as ‘stakeholders’ (see Chapter 2). It is taking these widely divergent groups into account, and attempting to meet their expectations on a continuing basis that makes the establishment of a formal management system an increasingly useful tool for all levels of management.

In the 1980s, the market started to express a preference for environmental awareness as a corporate characteristic. No one would deny that the amount of environmental legislation has increased considerably since this period, though definitive figures are harder to agree upon. Most observers agree too that this marked preference for a regulatory response to environmental problems is an expression of the market's unwillingness to believe that industry could possibly put its own house in order. There are not many organizations, however, that are content to be driven by the threat of legislation, especially if they wish to be around to reap the benefits of a relatively short term 20 year business plan.

Environmental issues are complex in and of themselves, let alone the exponential complexity caused by their interaction. Given that these issues are also currently being legislated for in terms of strict liability, it is hardly any wonder that industry has developed management tools and technical standards that will help it allow managers to manage. The aim is to manage proactively, to take action in advance of legislation, exceeding social expectations before they are realized in the form of a regulatory ‘blunt instrument’.

What is an EMS?

A key component of industrial self-regulation is the development of technical standards at national, European and international levels. In recent years, these standards have moved from mutually recognized technical details concerning the construction and performance of specific products or components, through to the development of standards on management systems, and the interaction of their individual elements.

There is no mystery about ‘management systems’. Even a sole trader will have some form of management system: it may not be formal, or based on standardized formatted paperwork, but it will be a management system nonetheless. In short, businesses only survive because they have some sort of system that works. No two management systems are the same, because no two companies are the same. Yet, at heart, any management system is simply a way of moving information around inside an organization. Its job is to make sure that the right information arrives at the right place at the right time, so that the right decisions can be made. On the other hand, in order to achieve this seemingly simple end, it will need to take into account an organization's personnel, structure, planning functions, operations, processes, procedures and even its habitual practices.

When the concept of producing technical standards that would define management systems first arose in the 1970s, the aim was to publish a document that would record all the landmark activities and functions that made for a successful system. The system would in turn deliver the outcomes that its management had identified as a desirable series of objectives. At the time of publication in 1979, British Standard BS 5750 was the world's first national standard on quality management systems, or indeed, any type of management system. It provided a remarkably long-lasting model, and is still in use today as the international standard ISO 9000.

Many will already have heard of ISO 9000 and even more will have had experience of working within a management system designed according to its principles. Such experience will prove useful when looking at environmental management systems. What will be of most interest to readers of this book will be the environmental equivalent of ISO 9000, called ISO 14001: Environmental management systems – specification with guidance for use. In Europe, the European Commission decided to encourage the take-up of a similar, but in some ways more prescriptive, voluntary scheme by promoting something called the Eco Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS). ISO 14001 and EMAS have done a lot to provide a focus of activity in the development of EMS, and it is likely that many of the readers of this book will be seeking to install a system that ultimately conforms to the requirements of one or both of the schemes. Even national or regional ‘phased implementation schemes’ for EMSs (such as those relating to British Standard BS 8555), which were originally designed for smaller enterprises, are ultimately aligned with ISO 14001. There is a commentary on the requirements of all the relevant schemes in Appendix I. Throughout the main text of the book, we have referred to the generic term ‘EMS’, encompassing all the schemes, only making specific references to the schemes for clarification where necessary.

This book has been designed to help those of you installing and ma...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures, Tables and Boxes
• Acronyms and Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: How to Use This Book
• Setting up
• Planning
• Doing
• Checking
• Acting
• Appendices
• Glossary