Is Your Environmental Management System Working?

Your company’s environmental management system should work for you — not make you work for it, says a WasteStrategies blog post.

The company, which provides waste reduction and zero waste tools and services, says an all-too-common approach to running an EMS is a procedural, documentation-oriented approach that often does little more that bog down the organization few or no real outcomes.

WasteStrategies says it looks for the following four red flags when assessing an organization’s EMS.

1. Lack of Management Commitment and Accountability. Environmental programs need to be a top priority for management.
2. Lack of Effective Risk Assessments. Understanding environmental impacts requires effective risk assessment.
3. Failure to Problem Solve. An effective EMS should have robust corrective and preventative action system, triggered by a solid system of identifying nonconformance.
4. Information Fails to Travel Full Circle. If management is driving one set of goals and the environmental staff is driving another set of goals, the organization is not in sync and the EMS is bound to fail.

Earlier this year Crown Equipment said its EMS has helped the material handling equipment manufacturer improve its environmental performance and achieve zero landfill at three of its facilities.