Environmental Management Plan System History

An Environmental Management System (EMS) is formed in order to make it possible for a company, organization, or government reduces the amount of impact that they have on the environment. The term can be restricted only to the operation of buildings, or it can include the life cycle of products as well. As an example, if you were to own five different buildings that are located in five different places, you would have a total of five environmental management systems.

In order to simplify the process, typically you would want a master document to be created that would review all of these systems together in concert with one another so that a picture of the entire operation could be formulated. As another example, if there were five different buildings that could all be found in the same location, they could all be included as a single Environmental Management System.

When implementing an Environmental Management Plan System, it needs to be reviewed periodically so that it can be adjusted and improved with time. This means that the implementation of an EMS has a cyclic nature to it. The procedure starts with identifying what operations exist and how they affect the environment, deciding what can be done about it. The second step is when these changes are put into practice. The third step is to see how effective the changes were. The fourth step is to determine further changes that need to be made. Before formal standards were laid down, EMS was still implemented by several companies in a less formal way. These procedures were followed in order to have compliance with many separate, individual regulations instead of combining them together into one system. These systems would be reviewed any time that there was some question as to whether or not compliance was being followed, or if the regulations changed.

The ISO 14000 series offers a guide to the proper implementation of EMS. ISO 14001 lays down a series of 17 basic requirements that are required in order to be compliant with the voluntary organization's standards:

• The company is required to have an environmental management plan policy that is clearly stated and followed.
• Products, services, and activities must be analyzed in order to determine the impact that they have on the environment.
• Obviously, the company is required to meet the legal requirements and regulations relevant to the area or areas in which it operates.
• A set of environmental goals needs to be laid down. A plan for how to reach those goals must also be put in place.
• Environmental roles and responsibilities are then defined by the organization.
• Steps need to be taken in order to ensure that the workforce is well aware of the guidelines put in place so that they can meet their responsibilities.
• A process of communication must be set up in order to discuss environmental issues both inside and outside of the organization.
• The organization is required to document information related to the EMS procedure.
• Documents regarding procedures and other elements of EMS must be effectively managed.
• The operation of the EMS must be effectively planned and managed. This includes the policy, objectives, goals, and so forth.
• The organization must also develop plans in order to effectively prevent and respond to emergency situations that could result in negative environmental impacts.
• Key activities need to be measured and monitored regularly.
• Compliance must be regularly evaluated
• Problems must be identified, corrected, and prevented from happening again.
• Records of EMS performance must be kept.
• The EMS must be audited on a regular basis.
• Management must periodically review the EMS.