Driving Sustainability to Business Success: The DS FactorManagement System Integration and Automation

CHAPTER 7 Principles for Environmental Management Systems

Companies are judged by their reputations and their codes of ethics. Business management requires you as the leaders within the organization to understand the principles you have for environmental management and how you will conduct your affairs. What do you value? What value are you creating tied with environmental management for your organization, for your customers, and for the world or society?

A company’s environmental management system (EMS) standardized to ISO 14001 is used to assist business managers to constantly improve their environmental commitment to prevention of pollution, identifying their environmental business risks. The organization’s management system needs to be appropriate to the nature, scale, and environmental impacts of its activities, products, and services.

ISO 14001’s definition of environment is “surroundings in which an organization operates, including air, water, land, natural resources, flora, fauna, humans and their interrelation. Note: Surroundings in this context extend from within an organization to the global system.” This is the environment that an organization needs to consider in its management system.

There are many benefits tied to developing an EMS, from providing a system that would provide due diligence to managing your business from reactionary to anticipatory, shifting your focus from end-of-pipe to point source control. This also can result in improved cost efficiency in ...