An environmental management system (EMS) is similar to other management systems, such as those that manage quality or safety. An EMS lets you:

• assesses your business' strengths and weaknesses
• identify and manage significant environmental impacts
• save money by increasing efficiency
• ensure you comply with environmental legislation
• provide benchmarks for environmental improvements

An EMS can also help you manage your resources, and improves the reliability and credibility of your environmental policy.

Basic steps of an environmental management system

The basic process of setting up an EMS is:

• identify the need and make the case for environmental improvements
• carry out an initial environmental review
• decide which environmental aspects are significant
• update or create your environmental policy
• set targets and objectives for environmental improvements
• report on your performance and review your EMS system

Getting your environmental management system certified

You can prove to customers that you are committed to meeting your environmental responsibilities by getting your EMS certified by a body approved by the United Kingdom Accreditation Services (UKAS).

There are a number of standards for environmental management to which your business can get certified:

• BS 8555 - a British standard that provides guidance for implementing an EMS on a phase-by-phase basis which can be a good way of working towards either ISO 14001
• ISO 14001 - the internationally recognised standard for environmental management systems

Setting up and running an environmental management system (EMS) has several advantages and disadvantages which you should weigh up carefully before proceeding.

Advantages of an environmental management system

Most advantages of an EMS stem from savings your business can make, increased profitability and better sales opportunities:

• Better regulatory compliance - running an EMS will help ensure your environmental legal responsibilities are met and more easily managed on a day-to-day basis.
• More effective use of resources - you will have policies and procedures in place that help you manage waste and resources more effectively and reduce costs.
• Marketing - you can highlight your business' credentials as an environmentally aware operation that has made a commitment to continual environmental improvement through advertising or annual reporting.
• Finance - you may find it easier to raise investment from banks and other financial institutions, which are increasingly keen to see businesses controlling their environmental impact.
• Increased sales opportunities - large businesses and government departments may only deal with businesses that have an EMS.
• Lighter regulation - even if an EMS is not a regulatory requirement, by showing your commitment to environmental management, you may benefit through less frequent site visits or reduced fees from environmental regulators.
• Certification to recognised standards - gaining external certification of your EMS through ISO 14001, BS 8555 or EMAS can give your business credibility with customers and stakeholders.

Disadvantages of an environmental management system

Some disadvantages of and EMS can stem from cost and staff negativity:

• Cost - the costs involved can vary considerably, however you should be able to find low-cost opportunities that will produce significant cost savings and offset the cost of implementing and operating your EMS.
• Time and resources - an EMS should help your business to become more profitable by reducing energy consumption, waste and, therefore, costs, however it is an investment which requires you to commit time and resources.
• Too burdensome - some businesses may be able to realise the benefits of an EMS, eg resource efficiency and cost savings, without having to operate a full EMS - or an informal system may be a better fit for your business than working to a standard like ISO 14001.
• Management or staff resistance - an EMS can be seen as unnecessary, so you should explain the basic aims and benefits early on in the process, eg through a presentation to the management board or through your business' communications.
• Scope - you can feel overwhelmed at the prospect of implementing an EMS across your business, however an EMS can be piloted within one part and later rolled out to other areas.
• Training costs - some members of staff will need to have a deep knowledge of the EMS. By using guidance or following the requirements of standards such as ISO 14001, an EMS can be implemented without the need for 'expert' training.

Get a free sustainability report

All Northern Ireland businesses with an annual energy and resource spend of more than £30k can get a free assessment of their environmental performance across areas such as raw materials, energy, carbon, packaging, biodiversity and waste - find out more about Invest NI Sustainability Reports.

Once you have assessed the resources needed, gained commitment and started raising awareness of the environmental management system (EMS), you should carry out an initial environmental review (IER).

What is an initial environmental review?

The IER is the first step in the implementation of an EMS - where a business considers all the factors affecting its 'relationship' with the environment. It should form the baseline and foundation for the other parts of your EMS.

Your IER should enable you to:

• identify how existing site operations have an environmental impact - eg the impact of normal operating conditions, abnormal conditions and emergency situations
• establish which of these impacts are significant and need improvement by setting objectives and targets
• identify breaches or potential breaches of environmental legislation
• identify relevant EMS documentation which needs to be put in place
• quantify emissions, discharges, and material and utility use
• identify opportunities for improving performance and minimising waste
• evaluate previous emergency situations and accidents
• develop your environmental policy

The IER will help you implement either a formal EMS - eg certified to ISO 14001 - or an informal EMS. If you already have an environmental policy, the results of the review should let you see how your current policy is performing and make any policy changes. It should also help you to draw up and implement an action plan to deal with any issues.

Gathering data for the initial environmental review

The main tasks involved in an IER are data gathering and analysis. You should identify which documents you will need to determine your business' environmental impacts. You should make sure they are available and make copies for future reference.

Download a checklist of the documentation you may need for an initial environmental review (DOC, 40K).

You should also collect the information needed for an IER of the site. This may involve walking around the site and interviewing key staff. Common areas for review include:

• site history and issues
• utilities
• inventory of raw materials
• aqueous waste
• solid wastes

Download a checklist of site issues to consider for an initial environmental review (DOC, 99K).

You may also need to look at other areas of interest such as:

• gas emissions
• the site setting and environment
• any other management systems already in place, eg for safety or quality
• health and safety issues
• materials storage and handling
• noise and vibration

Making use of your initial environmental review

The IER should give you a better awareness of the environmental issues affecting your business, and so make it easier to compile a register of environmental aspects and identify relevant environmental legislation. An environmental aspect is any element of your business' activities, products or services that can interact with the environment.

Spending more time on your IER - perhaps as much as 40 per cent of your total EMS implementation time - can save you work and time later on in the EMS process.

Identifying environmental aspects and impacts is a key part of setting up an environmental management system (EMS).

What are environmental aspects and impacts?

You should start with identifying environmental aspects and impacts:

• environmental aspect - any element of your business' activities that can interact with the environment, eg obtaining a raw material or product
• environmental impact - an effect that an aspect has on the environment, eg natural resource depletion, damage to habitats and potential water contamination

Identifying, understanding and recording your business' aspects and impacts will help you to comply with legislation and present opportunities to reduce your impact on the environment, minimise waste and reduce costs.

You should use information gained during your initial environmental review to identify and compile a register of your business' environmental aspects.

How to draw up a register of environmental aspects and impacts

To identify your environmental aspects, you could develop flow diagrams showing the main inputs and outputs of each of your processes or activities. Aspects can be:

• direct, such as packaging waste
• indirect, such as performance of suppliers

When drawing up your register you could list your processes and activities, and then list environmental aspects and impacts against each one. Your register of environmental aspects should contain:

• a list of all potential environmental aspects
• an assessment of the significance of each environmental aspect
• a note of what actions should be taken to reduce the impacts of significant environmental aspects

You may find it useful to include photographs of key environmental aspects in your register. This will help you to visualise and relate specific impacts to each environmental aspect.

How to set up a register of environmental legislation

Increasingly strict environmental legislation is being introduced, so it is important that your business makes sure it complies with these laws. You should also be able to clearly demonstrate your compliance to regulatory authorities.

You should produce a register of legislation for your EMS. This is a list of all relevant laws and approved codes of practice relating to your business' activities. It should also include any impending legislation that you are aware of. You do not need to hold full copies of all these documents, but the relevant people in your business must understand their requirements.

You may also want to include which product or process the legislation or code of practice applies to, where a copy can be found, the person responsible for compliance and any related EMS procedures.

Review your registers on a regular basis

Your environmental aspects and their significance may change due to new legislation or the introduction of a new process in your business, so you should review your registers regularly. Reviews should occur either annually, or when:

• projects or alterations are introduced, resulting in new or significantly modified activities
• new information is received - eg impending relevant environmental legislation
• new substances are introduced into the business activities

In order to prioritise areas for action in your environmental management system (EMS), you need to assess which of the environmental aspects and impacts you have identified are the most significant.

Certification bodies for EMS standards such as ISO 14001 will want to see evidence that your business has assessed its environmental aspects and impacts formally and logically. This will usually require the use of a system that rates and scores the relative significance of each.

Even if you are not seeking formal certification, assessing the significance of environmental aspects and impacts will help you to decide what the key environmental issues are. And how to make effective use of your resources by focusing on areas of high risk or most benefit.

Different operating conditions can have a large effect on the significance of an environmental impact. It is important you evaluate the significance of your identified environmental aspects under both normal operating conditions and other operating conditions, such as:

• abnormal operations - eg factory start-up after a holiday shutdown
• accidents or emergencies - eg fire
• past activities on the site
• planned activities

Methods for assessing environmental significance

There is no set approach for evaluating significance but, whatever approach you choose, it is important to record the reasons for your decision.

A simple method is to ask whether the aspect has the potential to seriously damage the environment, whether it is controlled by legislation or if it is of concern to customers and consumers. If the answer is yes to any of these questions, then it is significant and should be managed by your EMS.

You could develop a point scoring system by awarding a numerical score to each environmental aspect. You should consider those scoring more than an agreed amount as significant. For example, you could award each environmental aspect a score to reflect the relative importance of:

• legislation
• the severity of environmental damage
• reaction of interested parties such as customers and environmental groups
• quantity - eg the volume of the waste type

You should multiply each of the scores by a weighting factor, which reflects the overall importance of that particular criterion at your site or business. Adding these four scores together will produce a total score for that environmental aspect for normal or other operating conditions. It is up to you to decide the threshold score for environmental significance.

You should record the results of the evaluation, and the basis for your decisions regarding significance, to show that the exercise has been undertaken in a well-structured way. You should make sure that you review the significance of your environmental aspects and impacts on a regular basis.

When setting up an environmental management system (EMS), once you have conducted an initial environmental review and decided on areas of your environmental performance to improve, you need to set your environmental objectives and targets.

What are environmental objectives?

Environmental objectives are the overall aims that your business sets itself to improve environmental performance through its EMS.

They indicate the environmental aims of your business - eg to reduce waste going to landfill by 25 per cent over five years.

What are environmental targets?

Environmental targets provide short-term goals on the way to achieving your overall environmental performance objectives.

One objective can have several environmental targets - eg one target could be to reduce waste going to landfill by 10 per cent in the first year.

Your environmental objectives and targets should be based on:

• your environmental policy
• information gained from your initial review
• your register of legislation

They should aim to address any significant environmental aspects and should incorporate specific legal requirements contained in regulations and consents.

Creating your environmental policy

The policy should be the guiding document in your EMS. It should clearly set out how you will manage the environmental impact of your business and should show what commitments you are prepared to make.

It should be based on the key information from your baseline assessment and legal compliance check stages.

There is no one perfect way to create a policy document - it will depend on the particular needs of your business. But there are some key elements you need to include, such as:

• a commitment to continually improve your environmental performance
• a commitment to comply with environmental legislation
• a commitment to educate and train employees to enable them to work within the policy
• how the policy will be implemented, managed and reviewed

When setting environmental objectives and targets, it is important you:

• identify the individual or department responsible for ensuring that they are met
• identify someone to oversee the implementation of changes and check that targets are met
• ensure that the measures taken do not indirectly create another significant environmental aspect

Environmental management system continual improvement

To achieve certification to a formal EMS standard such as ISO 14001, you must demonstrate that you have taken steps towards achieving set objectives and targets. You must also have a monitoring programme and keep records of your monitoring regimes.

Although there is a requirement for continual improvement, there is no set rate at which you must improve. The requirement is merely to specify targets that are measurable and achievable. You can decide your business' continual improvement programme, taking into account the expectations of stakeholders and other interested parties.

How to benchmark your environmental performance

Benchmarking provides an indication of how a business' environmental performance compares with others in its sector or industry standards. If you adopt a systematic approach to improving your performance you can save money and increase your profits without having to raise prices.

Get a free sustainability report

All Northern Ireland businesses with an annual energy and resource spend of more than £30k can get a free assessment of their environmental performance across areas such as raw materials, energy, carbon, packaging, biodiversity and waste - find out more about Invest NI Sustainability Reports.

Operational controls and procedures are the measures that enable a business to function. They are also the means by which you can manage environmental impacts through your environmental management system (EMS).

Existing controls may be based on common sense and they may have been developed over a number of years. However, you are likely to need to change some controls and procedures in order to improve the environmental performance of your business.

Make sure that you consult with the appropriate members of staff. If they are reluctant to change the way they work, you should highlight any benefits to them, the business and the environment.

The work carried out during the initial environment review, and your environmental aspects and impacts, should help you to decide which elements of your business you need to focus on. When analysing and adapting your controls and procedures you should ensure that they will enable you to meet your targets and objectives.

You should look at what controls you need during normal conditions, abnormal conditions and emergencies. For example, if you are controlling emissions to air from a manufacturing process, you may need process controls, procedures for using monitoring equipment, and emergency plans and procedures.

You may need to work with your suppliers and contractors, if they affect your controls and procedures, to reduce the environmental impact of your supply chain.

Your environmental management system manual

The EMS manual is the document that supports your EMS and describes how it operates. This is also known as an environmental management manual and forms the instructions for your EMS.

The manual should provide a central point of reference for implementing and maintaining the overall system and all the operations and processes involved. It should also direct employees to other relevant documents when necessary.

The manual is usually produced, maintained and controlled by the environmental manager or management representative.

If you are developing the manual yourself, try to keep the system as simple as possible. The more procedures you introduce, the more you will have to audit and maintain.

Your EMS manual can be either paper-based or electronic. A simple approach to creating an EMS manual is to follow the headings set out in a formal standard, such as ISO 14001. Under each heading briefly describe your approach to tackling that issue and then indicate the location of supporting documents like:

• your environmental policy
• a chart showing your business' organisational structure
• a statement of your business' objectives and targets, and its environmental improvement programme
• the responsibilities of employees involved in the EMS
• documented procedures for all processes and activities that have a significant potential environmental impact

Clearly explaining your environmental management system (EMS) to your employees is vital. The more involved your staff are, the more committed they will be - making it easier to operate your system effectively.

Although you should keep all staff up to date, some employees will need more information about environmental issues than others. This will depend on the area they work in and how much responsibility they have.

Employees should have enough knowledge of the issues and commitments affecting their work activities to allow them to carry out their EMS objectives.

Motivating staff and encouraging employee input

As people often see environmental issues in global terms, it can take time for employees to appreciate the impacts of their working practices. So it's a good idea to explain the implications for the business if procedures aren't followed.

It is essential:

• to communicate clearly how the EMS affects departments and individuals
• that senior management continues to show commitment
• to ensure that employees are given the necessary training whenever their role changes

Internal communication about your environmental management system

To ensure effective internal communication, you should:

• inform employees in advance about the EMS and encourage them to start thinking about the part they can play
• keep employees updated throughout the process - eg by using an environmental noticeboard, internal emails or memos, meetings, your intranet or team briefings
• ask employees for their ideas - those doing a job every day often have ideas about how things can be done more efficiently
• be open - provide both good and bad feedback
• make sure employees understand and see the value of EMS procedures through suitable training
• set up frequent environmental management team meetings

Contractors, suppliers and external stakeholders and your environmental management system

Contractors and suppliers form part of your EMS and should be given a copy of your environmental policy. You should also make contractors aware of any environmental issues at your site.

If the contractor's duties require a higher degree of awareness, you should provide a contractor training session. This could include a short introduction to business procedures and requirements, and a presentation highlighting environmental issues on site.

Ask contractors to sign a form acknowledging that they have received the information, as external certification requires documented evidence that training procedures are in place.

You could provide information about your EMS to external stakeholders by providing information on your business website and in an environmental report.

Documents are an important element of an environmental management system (EMS) as they provide written evidence of procedures, records and instructions. They can also provide a history of the EMS, enabling you to check whether improvements are continuing to being made.

Environmental management system documents

Documents you are likely to need as part of your EMS include:

• an environmental policy
• objectives and targets
• structure and responsibilities for those involved in environmental work in your business
• information on how the EMS operates
• how documents and operational procedures are controlled
• monitoring and measurement records
• corrective and preventive action
• records, eg training and auditing information
• management review decisions

Your documents can be in either electronic or paper format. But whichever format you choose, you should ensure that they:

• are available for easy reference at all times
• are clear and unambiguous
• are updated and that people use the latest versions
• show who has responsibility for investigating and fixing problems

You should consider how documents are updated, who updates them, how you ensure people look at the most up-to-date version and what happens to old versions. If you have a quality management system - such as ISO 9000 - you should already have document control procedures in place and can follow quality management standards.

It is important to provide relevant employees with detailed instructions on how to operate processes that could have a significant environmental aspect.

Download a sample template for documenting an environmental management system procedure (DOC, 37K).

It is easy to have too many documents. You should only provide documents if their absence might result in a negative impact on the environment or prevent your EMS from functioning properly.

Setting up and running an environmental management system (EMS) can bring your business many benefits, but can also put a strain on resources. Here's our top tips to getting the implementation of an EMS right.

Environmental management system top tips

1. Start from the top

To give your EMS the best chance of being efficient and successful, you need to ensure the management of your business is committed to improving and managing environmental issues. There are a number of benefits you can consider in order to persuade management of the benefits of running an EMS, including cost reduction, compliance with environmental legislation, better management of risk and significant marketing benefits.

2. Set a robust baseline

The process of setting up an EMS starts with a baseline assessment of where your business stands now, in terms of environmental management. You could benchmark your business' environmental performance against similar operations to assess where you stand. It's essential to analyse all your business processes, stage by stage, to uncover where strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats are posed to good environmental management.

3. Set clear management roles

It's essential to define management responsibilities clearly for each area of your policy. For example, make it clear who is responsible for meeting any waste targets and who is responsible for monitoring the financial impact of the policy's implementation. Delegating specific responsibilities - and ensuring the management team is aware of these responsibilities - will significantly boost the policy's chances of success.

4. Invest in training and awareness

All of your staff need to be aware of the purpose of your EMS and environmental policy, and their role within it. It's a good idea to run training sessions, so that every member of staff knows what is expected of them - and why. Refresher training - eg on an annual basis - means you can communicate changes, while building awareness into induction plans means new staff will be on board with your policy from the start.

5. Keep the plan on track

It's a good idea to consider using 'champions' to raise awareness of your EMS and its operational controls. This can create more honest and effective communication between management and employees on issues related to your EMS. If you appoint a champion, you must ensure they are given complete management support in this role otherwise they will be undermined and their effectiveness diminished.