ENVIROCELL

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CONSULTANCY ACTIVITIES

Environmental Management

Until the early 1990s, individual areas in which papermaking impacted on the environment were managed in a fragmented way and many areas were neglected. This began to change with the advent of so-called environmental auditing of mill sites, but this in fact differed little from what might previously have been simply called an environmental survey. The era of integrated environmental management began in the mid-1990s, due largely to the development of BS 7750 on environmental management systems and the parallel, but more demanding, EU Regulation on Eco-Management and Auditing. BS 7750 was soon superseded by ISO 14001, and both EMAS and ISO 14001 have now been updated (see diagram below for relationship between ISO 14001 and EMAS). About 100 pulp and paper mills have been verified to EMAS and at least 400 mills to ISO 14001.

Consultancy to do with environmental management can be provided in the following areas.

Environmental Reviews

This is an essential preliminary element in the formative process of setting up a management system. Essentially it creates an environmental snapshot of the company's current position and identifies the areas of work required to implement a management system such as ISO 14001 or EMAS. Key elements are drawing up the registers of relevant legislation and environmental effects.

Developing policies, objectives and targets

Once the environmental effects have been identified in the review, it is possible to set up the hierarchy of policy, objectives and targets on a company-wide or individual unit basis. The initial emphasis of this may be descriptive (ie to obtain more information in certain areas) rather than quantitative. The objectives and targets should be set in relation to existing levels and to "best practice" levels for that particular sector. Key areas for most paper mills are likely to be material purchasing; energy use and related emissions; wastewater losses and sludge disposal; transportation of raw materials and products; and product responsibilities after use.

Establishing the operational management system

This is the area where experience with ISO 9000 on Quality Management Systems should pay great rewards in terms of familiarity with the documentation requirements. This involves preparing the environmental manual as well as normal record keeping. The manual should document the way that the system is integrated with other management activities and how the mill is managed to meet the policy and objectives.

Environmental audits, reviews and reports

The term "auditing" should be reserved for the activity of independently attesting information (as practised most commonly by accountants), but it is used somewhat more loosely in the ISO 14000 series. Reviews are more to do with ensuring that audit findings are implemented and that business changes are taken into account within the environmental management system. Full environmental reports are still in their relative infancy, but the environmental statement required under EMAS is a form of environmental report for public consumption. Openness and transparency via such measures will be an important indicator of a company's environmental credibility in the future.