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Organizations implement an Environmental Management System (EMS) to improve environmental performance, and central to an EMS are environmental aspects and impacts. Organizations must understand how operational activities interact with the environment (the aspects) and the changes to the environment that result (the impacts).
Environmental aspects and impacts help organizations determine what activities, products, and services can be changed to improve environmental performance.
Scope
The EMS framework consists of the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle. Organizations go through the cycle when first establishing an EMS and then repeatedly go through the cycle for continual improvement. Environmental aspects and impacts are relevant to every part of the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle.
Foundational to the EMS planning and development process, environmental aspects and impacts help organizations:
- Set environmental objectives,
- Identify operational controls,
- Determine monitoring and measurement activities,
- Train employees (particularly those directly involved with achieving objectives and implementing operational controls),
- Form corrective action plans, and
- Find opportunities for improvement.
Additionally, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14001 requires organizations seeking ISO 14001 certification to identify environmental aspects and impacts.
Regulatory citations
- ISO 14001 — Environmental Management Systems [optional certification]
Key definitions
- Environmental aspect: The part of an activity, product, or service that interacts with the environment and causes or may cause an environmental impact.
- Environmental impact: Any change to the environment, whether adverse or beneficial, caused by an environmental aspect.
- Significant environmental aspects (SEAs): are the environmental aspects of an organization that have more significant environmental impacts than others.
Summary of requirements
After top management establishes an environmental policy formally committing to reducing environmental impacts and achieving continual improvement, determine the organization’s environmental aspects and impacts.
- Develop a list of environmental aspects and impacts. Consider whether the organization’s activities, during normal operations and emergency operations, involve or could involve:
- Emissions to the air,
- Releases to water or land,
- Use of natural resources,
- Use of energy, and/or
- Generation of waste.
- Establish criteria to determine which aspects have the most significant impact. The criteria are unique to each organization. Examples include:
- Frequency of the activity,
- Potential consequences (e.g., short- vs. long-term damage or minimal vs. severe effects),
- Legal or compliance requirements (if applicable), and
- Stakeholder interest.
- Identify the significant environmental aspects (SEAs), which help organizations determine how to use resources to make the most significant changes.
Once identified:
- Set environment goals with SEAs in mind,
- Use operational controls to reduce the negative environmental impacts of SEAs,
- Ensure trained and competent individuals manage SEAs, and
- Monitor and/or measure SEAs.