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Environmental Management Systems
An Environmental Management System (EMS) is a practical approach to addressing environmental concerns and provides a framework to help identify and manage environmental obligations. It consists of a set of tools and principles that work together to create a management system that integrates environmental concerns into daily business practices.
It is a means for organizations to improve the effectiveness of their efforts to manage their environmental obligations and provides an outline of procedures, a system, that when diligently followed will provide consistency in considering the environmental implications of all of an organisations endeavors.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) formulated the ISO 14001 Environmental Management System Standard. This international standard is currently viewed by many as the EMS tool of choice for organisations involved in international trade or other activities that have an environmental impact, and many world-class organisations are moving to become ISO 14000 certified.
To minimise duplication and enhance integration of all management effort, it is strongly encouraged to integrate the environmental management requirements with other management systems. There are many overlapping areas, such as inductions, training, defining responsibilities, communication, dangerous goods management, emergency response, document control, record keeping, non-conformance and corrective and preventative action, audits and management review. Expanding existing systems to include consideration of environmental risks is an efficient way of implementing the requirements of the EMS.
A properly developed EMS is built on the "Plan, Do, Check, Act" model for continual improvement and Achievable Solutions develops systems covering the following:
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