EPM_MODULE 3
EPM_MODULE 3
• Environmental Policy
• Communication
• Operational Control
• Management Review
• EMAS
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Environmental Protection Management (21CV753) By: Dhanashree N Nerlikar
ISO 14000
The aim of the ISO 14000 series of standards is to help organizations implement and improve their
EMS. The primary objective of the ISO 14000 series of standards is to promote effective
environmental management systems in organizations. It provides a framework that an organization
can follow, rather than establishing environmental performance requirements.
The standards seek to provide cost-effective tools that make use of best practices for organizing
and applying information about environmental management.
The ISO 14000 family was developed in response to a recognized industry need for
standardization. With different organizational approaches to environmental management,
comparisons of systems and collaboration had proved difficult. ISO 14000 standards and practices
can be applied to any organization, regardless of size or industry.
The ISO 14000 family includes most notably the ISO 14001 standard, which represents the core
set of standards used by organizations for designing and implementing an effective environmental
management system (EMS). Other standards in this series include ISO 14004, which gives
additional guidelines for a good EMS and standards that are more specialized dealing with specific
aspects of environmental management
• have a procedure for identifying and having access to environmental laws and regulations;
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Environmental Protection Management (21CV753) By: Dhanashree N Nerlikar
• set objectives and targets that are in line with its environmental policy (which includes a
commitment to compliance);
• The first environmental management system standard, BS 7750, was published in 1992 by
the BSI group.
• In 1996, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) created the ISO 14000
family of standards.
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Environmental Protection Management (21CV753) By: Dhanashree N Nerlikar
An Environmental Management System (EMS) is a set of processes and practices that enable an
organization to reduce its environmental impacts and increase its operating efficiency.
The assumption is that this consistent review and evaluation will identify opportunities for
improving and implementing the environmental performance of the organization. The EMS itself
does not dictate a level of environmental performance that must be achieved; each organization's
EMS is tailored to its own individual objectives and targets. An EMS can also help address non-
regulated issues, such as energy conservation, and can promote stronger operational control and
employee stewardship.
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Environmental Protection Management (21CV753) By: Dhanashree N Nerlikar
3. Legal and other requirements: Identify and ensure access to relevant laws and
regulations (and other requirements to which your organization adheres).
4. Objectives and targets: Establish environmental goals for your organization, in line with
your policy, environmental impacts, views of interested parties and other factors.
6. Structure and responsibility: Establish roles and responsibilities and provide resources.
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Environmental Protection Management (21CV753) By: Dhanashree N Nerlikar
7. Training, awareness and competence: Ensure that your employees are trained and
capable of carrying out their environmental responsibilities.
10. Document control: Ensure effective management of procedures and other system
documents.
11. Operational control: Identify, plan and manage your operations and activities in line with
your policy, objectives and targets.
12. Emergency preparedness and response: Identify potential emergencies and develop
procedures for preventing and responding to them.
13. Monitoring and measurement: Monitor key activities and track performance.
14. Nonconformance and corrective and preventive action: Identify and correct problems
and prevent recurrences.
16. EMS audit: Periodically verify that your EMS is operating as intended.
17. Management review: Periodically review your EMS with an eye to continual
improvement.
Benefits of EMS:
• Enhanced compliance
• Pollution prevention
• Resource conservation
• New customers/markets
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Environmental Protection Management (21CV753) By: Dhanashree N Nerlikar
Barriers of EMS:
• Employees are unable to perceive the benefit of EMS and relate these to their own benefits
• Documentation may prove a deterrent. Companies may feel that EMS leads to generation
of too much paperwork and hence may not implement the system.
• Cost of Certification is prohibitive, especially SMEs, find it difficult to bear the cost of
getting auditors from abroad
• Recurring cost of certification. Every 3 years companies need to apply for re-certification.
• The system may remain on paper and be implemented only for audit purposes.
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Environmental Protection Management (21CV753) By: Dhanashree N Nerlikar
The first step in creating an EMS is to perform an Initial Environmental Review. This tells
organization where they are and creates a road map for the organization. In order to build a solid
environmental management system it is essential to understand exactly how the activities, products
and services of the organization interact with the environment.
This process will enable organization to understand what aspects of the organization have a
significant environmental impact. It will ensure that other aspects of the environmental
management system – policy, objectives, targets and the management program – are focused on
those areas where organization can gain the most benefits. The environmental review is the starting
point for a good environmental management system.
• identify how existing site operations have an environmental impact – eg. the impact of
normal operating conditions, abnormal conditions and emergency situations
• establish which of these impacts are significant and need improvement by setting
objectives and targets
The Initial Environmental Review helps determine the organization’s environmental position, and
should include:
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Environmental Protection Management (21CV753) By: Dhanashree N Nerlikar
Environmental Policy:
The ISO 14001 standard is probably the best reference standard for the development of an
environmental policy.
• provide the framework for setting and reviewing environmental objectives and targets
It is most often understood as a public statement of the intentions and principles of action for the
organization regarding the environment. The policy statement should define the broad
environmental goals the organization has decided to achieve. These are most clear if they are
quantified, e.g., to reduce emissions of pollutants by 95% within 5 years, to provide sewerage and
biological treatment of sludge for 60% of the population within 3 years, etc.
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Environmental Protection Management (21CV753) By: Dhanashree N Nerlikar
An organization can publicly advertise that it has considered its environmental performance and
has adopted best practice or is working towards improving its environmental performance. It is all
relative to the organization and the type of industry but the environmental policy can advertise the
environmental status and environmental objectives of the organization to all stakeholders.
Current and potential clients can read the statement and are able to determine whether they would
like to continue or start business with the organization. It also can provide clear direction to all
stakeholders about the organization’s environmental values.
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Environmental Protection Management (21CV753) By: Dhanashree N Nerlikar
An environmental aspect is the way your activity, service, or product impacts the environment.
For example, one of the environmental aspects of car washing may be a cleaning agent that has
potential for water pollution (this pollution is the environmental impact).
All activities, services, and products that fall within your defined scope have to be taken into
consideration to identify environmental aspects and impacts. An activity is a part of the core
business (e.g., production process steps). Service means an auxiliary service that supports core
activities (e.g., boilers, heating & cooling, maintenance). A product is the goods you offer for
market. An environmental aspect of the product could be, e.g., excessive packaging of the product,
or level of recyclability of the product at the end of its lifecycle.
Aspects can be divided into direct and indirect. Direct environmental aspects are associated with
activities, products, and services of the organization itself, over which it has direct management
control (e.g., how you manage waste on your site).
However, for non-industrial organizations the focus will often be on indirect environmental aspects
of their activities (e.g., how your subcontractor manages waste on your site, chain controlled
aspects, customer controlled aspects). The identification of environmental aspects often considers,
e.g., emissions to air, releases to water and land, use of raw material, waste and natural resources,
impacts on biodiversity, etc.
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Environmental Protection Management (21CV753) By: Dhanashree N Nerlikar
Almost all organizations implementing ISO 14001 are aware that legal requirements are the
foundation and basic requirement of ISO 14001.
1. Environmental Policy should reflect the commitment of top management to comply with
applicable legal requirements and other requirements, supported by adequate resources.
2. The organization may find environmental regulations on the website of government agencies
in charge of environmental protection or on other specialized services. In a wide list of
regulations, you should choose only those that are applicable to your business.
3. The organization should plan how to comply with legal requirements. If you find during
identification of applicable legal requirements that you are partially in compliance with a
specific applicable regulation, or you have completely ignored it, now is the time to set it as a
target.
4. In the implementation phase, the organization should have instruments in place for dealing
with legal requirements (e.g., sufficient documents to demonstrate compliance, responsibilities
and authorities
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Environmental Protection Management (21CV753) By: Dhanashree N Nerlikar
By definition, an objective is “a thing aimed at or sought; a goal.” In ISO 14001 you are using
your environmental objectives to identify, track, and notify employees and interested parties what
the goals of organization environmental management system (EMS) improvements are to be. They
need to be made relevant at all levels of the organization that need to know them, and they need to
be consistent with organization environmental policy, since this is the overall stated goal of the
EMS.
In the ISO 14001 standard they discuss objectives and targets together, and this can help
organization to understand them better. The best objectives are referred to as S.M.A.R.T.
objectives (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based), and this way of creating
objectives makes a target an integral part of the objective.
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Environmental Protection Management (21CV753) By: Dhanashree N Nerlikar
• Specific: The first thing that is needed in a good objective is that it be specific, including a
specific target.
• Measurable: Hand in hand with the specific objective is an objective that can be measured.
If you have no way of measuring how a process is performing now, then how will you
know if you have made any improvement? The standard itself even mentions that
objectives and targets should be measurable where practicable.
• Agreed: To make objective happen organization need to have it agreed upon by those who
will be doing the work.
• Realistic: By making a goal realistic, organization can better gather the necessary
cooperation of the people in the process that are affected by the change.
• Time-Based: Having a time associated with the completion of the objective allows for
tracking organization progress toward achieving your goals.
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Environmental Protection Management (21CV753) By: Dhanashree N Nerlikar
An Environmental Management Program is the roadmap the organization will follow to achieve
its environmental objectives and targets. It is a document that provides the details of what must be
done, by whom, how, and when, for each of the defined objectives and targets. The objectives and
targets themselves must be assigned priorities at the start.
• Management must designate responsibility for achieving the objectives and targets at each
function and level within the organization.
• Management must provide the means for fulfilling the objectives and targets. In a practical
sense, this means allocating resources, such as people, skills, technologies, and financing.
If the company is going to truly commit to implementing an EMS, then in short,
management needs to put the corporation's money where its mouth is.
• A time frame in which objectives and targets will be achieved needs to be established. The
implementers need to be challenged to meet a realistic implementation schedule with the
resources that are made available.
The environmental management program should be integrated into the company's overall strategic
plan. Within the spirit of the EMS, environmental management programs should be reviewed
periodically and revised regularly to reflect changes in the company's objectives and targets.
Continual Improvement is an important aspect of any EMS and ISO 14001 references it in five
separate clauses. To fully benefit from it, it’s not enough to implement a system based on ISO
14001, or even to have your EMS certified as ISO 14001-compliant—the organization must
monitor and maintain its system, and find ways to improve to it. Similarly, the International
Organization for Standardization (ISO) reviews and revises its standards in an ongoing effort to
improve relevance and effectiveness.
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Environmental Protection Management (21CV753) By: Dhanashree N Nerlikar
• Increase Efficiency
• Increase Quality
• Reduce Costs
Organizations that implement continuous improvement achieve this by making small, gradual
improvements over time.
Pollution prevention:
Pollution prevention is defined to mean the use of processes or practices that reduce or eliminate
the use of hazardous substances and the generation of pollutants or wastes at the source. This
contrasts with pollution control, which relies on end of pipe treatment.
Pollution prevention also includes practices that reduce the use of energy, water or other resources
through conservation or more efficient use.
Where pollution prevention is not feasible, the EMS should include options for recycling,treatment
and disposal, considered in that order.
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Environmental Protection Management (21CV753) By: Dhanashree N Nerlikar
The facility shall establish and maintain an environmental management system, which must
include the following pollution prevention criteria.
a. Provide for recycling or treatment of hazardous wastes (in that order) where pollution
prevention is not technically or economically feasible.
d. Establish a commitment from top management to implement the policies and to review
and evaluate the EMS at periodic intervals
For EMS to be effective, roles and responsibilities must be clearly defined and communicated. In
an organization, the commitment of all employees is needed.
Top management plays a key role by providing the resources needed to ensure that the EMS is
implemented effectively. Ensuring this capability is one of the most important jobs of top
management.
This representative:
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Competence:
The first step is to identify what skills and abilities are required for a person to perform the job
function so as to avoid the potential significant impacts. This competence can be gained in the
form of outside education, training, or experience. For instance, if you have a chemical process
that must maintain the concentration of a bath to a certain pH, or else there will be unwanted air
emissions, then this bath concentration must be maintained.
If you require the operator to measure the concentrations and adjust the pH level through addition
of an acid or base, then there is a level of chemical knowledge required to perform this action. It
may not require the operator to hold a degree in chemistry, but chemical knowledge must be there
in order to avoid the unwanted environmental impact of air emissions.
Training:
After identifying what competencies are required for the processes to avoid potential significant
environmental impacts, you need to find people with these competencies to fill these positions. Of
course, in reality there will often be a choice of candidates who have many of the required
competencies, but not all of them. This is where training comes into place, especially when you
are first implementing your environmental management system and find that the people already
doing a job do not have all of the competencies that are newly identified for the position.
Training can come in many forms, from enrollment in external programs offered by colleges,
universities, or specialized training companies, to on-the-job training where an experienced person
works with a less-experienced individual to teach them the knowledge they need to perform the
job. The employee in the example above need not attain a degree in chemical engineering to
perform the job, but they may need to gain an understanding of the chemical processes required to
safely perform their tasks.
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Environmental Protection Management (21CV753) By: Dhanashree N Nerlikar
Awareness:
Even those who have the desired competencies need to be made aware of how their tasks can lead
to the identified potential environmental impacts. The requirements of ISO 14001 separate the
need for awareness into four distinct areas:
• Conforming to the environmental policy and procedures. When people understand why
a policy or procedure is in place, they are much more likely to follow that requirement.
Telling employees that they need to prevent pollution from their process is one thing, but
when they understand that not following the process can lead to environmental damage and
potential fines that can lead to company insolvency, they may be more likely to follow the
rules.
• Roles and responsibilities to achieve conformity. If a person does not understand what
their role is, they are very unlikely to perform that role. This is particularly important when
you are dealing with a temporary employee or contractor who will not know your specific
processes unless you tell them. For example, if you expect that all fluorescent light bulbs
will be collected and stored for proper recycling, but do not tell a contractor or summer
student who is employed to replace the bulbs, then they may just throw them in the regular
garbage because they did not understand that this was their role.
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Environmental Protection Management (21CV753) By: Dhanashree N Nerlikar
Communications:
Communication is the glue that holds together the elements of an environmental management
system. Effective environmental management requires effective communications.
• explain the environmental policy (both internally and externally) and how it relates to the
overall business vision / strategy;
Effective internal communications require mechanisms for information to flow top-down and
bottom-up. Since employees are on the “front lines,” they are often an excellent source of
information, issues and ideas.
Communicating with external parties is also important for effective environmental management.
Obtaining the views of neighbors, community groups, and customers, (among others), will help
you understand how your organization is perceived by others. Information from external sources
can be critical in setting environmental and other business goals.
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• an environmental policy
• structure and responsibilities for those involved in environmental work in your business
Document control procedure should designate responsibility and authority for preparing
documents, making changes to them and keeping them up-to-date. In other words, organization
need to make it clear who can actually change documents
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Environmental Protection Management (21CV753) By: Dhanashree N Nerlikar
Operational Control
Effective operational planning and control lies at the heart of every effective EMS (Environmental
Management System).
• create controls in line with its environmental requirements to ensure that the design and
development process for the product or service considers the life cycle stage
• define the environmental requirements for the procurement of products and services
• consider the need to provide information in regards to the end-of-life treatment of products
and services with consideration in, transportation, delivery, use, and final disposal.
• maintain detailed documentation to ensure that the processes have been carried out as
planned
If an operation or activity is complex, and/or the environmental impacts have the potential to be
significant, these controls put in place should take the form of documented procedures. To develop
an effective EMS an organization must determine which operations should be covered by
documented procedures and how those operations should be controlled
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Monitoring helps organization to manage business better. An EMS without an effective monitoring
and measurement program is like driving at night without the headlights on — you know that you
are moving but you can’t tell where you are going!
• monitor key characteristics of operations and activities that can have significant
environmental impacts;
• track performance (including how well organization meet objectives and targets);
• through internal audits, periodically evaluate your compliance with applicable laws and
regulations
Management Review:
Management review is intended to ensure that the environmental management system is healthy,
and to look for places that improvement can happen. Management reviews also offer a great
opportunity to keep EMS efficient and cost-effective.
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The aim of EMAS is to recognize and reward those organizations that go beyond minimum legal
compliance and continuously improve their environmental performance.
PERFORMANCE: EMAS supports organisations in finding the right tools to improve their
environmental performance. Participating organisations voluntarily commit to both evaluating and
reducing their environmental impact.
CREDIBILITY: Third party verification guarantees the external and independent nature of the
EMAS registration process.
EMAS calls for maintenance of an effective environmental management system (EMS) which
ensures that an environmental policy is available, that objectives, targets and programmes are set
to improve environmental performance and the promulgation of such to ensure continuous
improvement as a whole.
Benefits of EMAS:
• EMAS registrants can use the EMAS logo to promote their achievement and commitment
to environmental performance.
• The EMAS Register lists the details of all organizations that have met the requirements
and are currently registered.
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• Customer satisfaction
Implementation:
In order to register with EMAS, an organization must comply with the following implementation
steps:
• Environmental review
• Environmental policy
• Environmental programme
• Environmental management system
• Environmental audit
• Environmental statement
• Verification and Registration
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