There is no standard content for an environmental policy, although policies normally contain similar themes. Your policy should be personal to your business, so it should reflect the business' main activities, priorities and concerns.
The content of your policy should be based on the results of your assessment, which should have identified the key environmental issues that apply to your business. Additional issues relevant to your business that you may wish to address in your environmental policy could include:. If your business is linked closely to key customers through the supply chain, obtain a copy of their environmental policy, so that your statements can reflect their requirements and needs.
Your policy should demonstrate commitment by senior management and is usually signed by the managing director, chairperson or chief executive. You may want to integrate your environmental policy with other policies on health and safety, quality management, corporate social responsibility or sustainability. Download an example environmental policy DOC, 26K. My New Business Northern Ireland business support finder Sample templates, forms, letters, policies and checklists Licence finder Find a case study Do it online.
Once you have secured this commitment, it's a good idea to assess where your business currently stands in terms of environmental management. This could include drawing up an environmental history of your business, its impact and the risks faced by it. You could also carry out a benchmarking exercise to establish how you compare against similar businesses.
It's important to tailor your environmental policy to reflect your business and its culture. A good starting point is to collect and review examples of policies written by other businesses and select the format and style most appropriate to your own business. However, avoid copying someone else's policy. There is no standard content for an environmental policy, although policies normally contain the same themes.
Bear in mind that your policy should be personal to your business, and as such reflect the activities, priorities and concerns most relevant to it. Before you write your policy you should assess which aspects of your business affect the environment and what the potential impacts are.
There are a number of techniques that you could use when carrying out the assessment. The content of your policy should be based on the results of your assessment, which should have identified the key issues that apply to your business. Additional issues relevant to your business, and which you may wish to address in your environmental policy, could include:.
If your business is linked closely to key customers through the supply chain, obtain a copy of their environmental policy, so that your statements can reflect their requirements and needs.
Your policy should demonstrate commitment by senior management and is usually signed by the chairman or chief executive. You may want to integrate your environmental policy with other policies on health and safety, quality management, corporate social responsibility or sustainability.
The checklist below may help you to draft a policy appropriate to your business. Choose examples of the statements that would apply to your business and make the statements as specific as possible for your operations:.
To check that your company's current activities still comply with your environmental policy, it's a good idea to carry out a regular review - usually on an annual basis, or in the first six months initially. These are key to ensuring that there is continual improvement in environmental performance and that more specific environmental targets are set on a yearly basis. Bear in mind that if your business activities or operations change significantly, the policy may need to be amended.
If your policy is not kept up to date, and it is not backed up with some form of environmental improvement such as a formal environmental management system or less formal program of improvements , other organisations may think that you're not taking your environmental responsibilities seriously. Consequently, they may decide to take their business elsewhere. Similarly, if your policy says that you are taking your environmental responsibilities seriously but you fail to back this up, you may face questions over the quality of operations in other parts of your business.
This could tarnish your reputation with customers and suppliers. It's a good idea to involve employees in the reviewing process. If employees are expected to deliver on environmental policy commitments, they may be a good source of ideas for improvements. The environmental policy should be available for all new employees to read and to all existing employees if it changes significantly. Your environmental policy doesn't have to exist in isolation. In fact, it can be useful to extend the scope of your policy to cover corporate social responsibility and sustainable development.
You could choose to develop this either within a single policy or create separate, linked policies. Available to the public — Unlike many management systems, the environmental policy is expected to be shared with anyone outside of the company who asks. This can be posted on the external website or made available by inquiry, but if someone wants to know what your policy is it should be readily available.
This is how your investment in an environmental management system can become a publicity tool for your company. Remember the environmental policy needs to be tailored to your company and how it interacts with the environment. Make the policy as simple as possible so that it is easily understood, but still meaningful to help your employees and others know what your company intends to do about improving its environmental impact.
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ISO Knowledge base. Mark Hammar. What is an environmental policy? Upcoming free webinar. Presenter Iciar Gallo. Tuesday — November 9, Demystification of legal requirements in ISO robertverbanac October 1, Almost all organizations implementing ISO are aware that legal requirements are the
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