Greening your business!

Demonstrating environmental performance has now become a well-accepted business model for the organisations and the businesses. Faced with increased legislation, green consciousness and fulfilling customer expectations, supply chain pressure, industry began to develop new management techniques to deal with the agenda. Many big businesses in the developed countries already have mature ISO14001 Environmental Management System (EMS) to assess and manage their environmental impacts of their business activities. However, in the developing countries like Bangladesh this process has been so far quite slow.

An EMS can be described as ‘a programme of continuous environmental improvement that follows a defined sequence of steps drawn from established project management practice and routinely applied in businesses management’ (World Bank Group, 1998). In 1997, the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) has produced an international standard for environmental Management System – ISO14001. The series of ISO14000 are the sets of standards and guidelines defines the core of Environmental Management System (ISO14001) itself and the auditing procedures necessary for verification.

Environmental impacts occur at every stage of business activities – from the type and amount of raw materials being used (material input), to the production process, creation of waste and to the means of distribution (material output) and resource recovery and recycling etc. It says ‘if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’. On the basis of this principle, a good environmental management has to start with the measurements, for example identify, quantify and assess of all environmental impacts and be in a position to manage them.

Within the EMS, there needs to be an Environmental Policy and that is the main instrument for communicating environmental priorities of the business organisation. Followed by environmental programme (procedures) which ensure how to achieve specific goals and objectives highlighted in the policy. It is essential to monitor the progress, review the current situation and feed into any improvement plan to a simple systematic management ‘plan-do-check-act’ cycle.

Following are the internal and external factors that would shape the take-up and influence of EMS:

Internal factors:

- Awareness raising campaign: environmental policy must be clearly communicated to all the member of the staff so that everyone knows about it, also raising awareness of the potential impacts their work might have on the environment.

- Implementation cost: obtaining EMS certification would involve costs, time, trained personnel and effort for the businesses. These are main reasons why Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) are still reluctant to uptake EMS.

- New attitudes to accept the changes: changes will inevitably be there if a business tries to establish its environmental policy into their procedure. For example, reducing energy consumption may require changes to the manufacturing process or using different raw materials may result in modification of the design of the products.

- Leadership - commitment across the company: leadership is required at all levels and in all functions for meaningful change to occur e.g. manufacturing, distribution, retail sales have the most visible environmental footprint. And the manufacturers or the producers are often come close to environmentally cautious customers within these processes.

- Resources, Roles, Responsibility and Authority: administrating an EMS programme needs a clear line of command and responsibility from the highest to lowest level. Each employee in the company must know exactly who is responsible for which aspects of the programme. More over, each employee needs to know within the scope of their assigned activities in accordance with environmental procedures and work instructions, also report to their departmental managers in case of any environmental non-conformity.

- The fear of failure : it is very important that the fear of failure should be eliminated from the staff’s mind and staff need to be encouraged in areas, which are unfamiliar to them and staff must gain confidence and knowledge in those areas.

- Earlier registration of any management standards: any history of ISO9001 quality management standards would be helpful to adopt EMS quite easily and quickly. The revised ISO9001 and ISO14001 Environmental Management System are compatible particularly with regard to terminology and content.

- Employees: sometimes employees take initiatives on good environmental practices, within their own organisations, for example segregating papers to be recycled. Colleagues can be a positive influence to other colleagues and the good intention can reach up to the senior managers who would think harder to resolve the issue when he/she sees that enthusiastic new ideas came from his/her own working forces.

External factors:

- Regulations: legislative compliance is unavoidable by the business organisations. It is very important that they are compliant with the current environmental legislation to avoid fines and prosecution, as well as considering forthcoming legislative requirements so that any changes whether it is related to products or services would be easily accommodated. Sudden change could incur costs, time and unnecessary disruptions.

- Consumers and corporate image: consumers are increasingly concerned about the environmental characters (e.g. negative impacts on the environment and human health) of any product. Therefore, it’s an opportunity for business organisations to enhance business’ image by going green. However, any false green claims from the organisation about their products will be very quickly found out and it will be harder to rebuild the good reputation again.

- Supply chain: Businesses need to ensure that their whole operation relating to that product is green. Both up-stream and down-stream supply chains need to comply with the environmental requirements. This way business organisation can also influence or put pressure on their supply chains to motivate them to act as environmental responsible businesses.

- Economic motivation and competition: competition with other businesses is another factor, which drive businesses to take up the environmental management system. When customers will see that a business organisation has got an environmental sound policy then they will be more attracted towards them than those who do not have any.

- Stakeholders’ pressure: external stakeholders, for example customers, local communities, supply chains, regulators, governments, insurer and Environmental Non-Governmental Organisations (ENGOs) are increasingly pressuring businesses to show green credentials and disclose environmental performances.

- Relationship with regulatory bodies: good environmental management practices will assist to maintain a good relationship with the regulatory bodies. Management quality will determine the nature and frequency of site visits from the regulators.  

 

Finally, an environmental management system will provide a useful tool for a business or an organisation to identify, quantify, monitor and assess the environmental impacts and providing a basis for external recognition. At the same time environmental management standards are not ‘magic bullets’ that will achieve environmental improvements where regulation and enforcement are ineffective or that can open market where competition is strong. Environmental Management System provides a framework on which to build better performance, greater efficiency, a competitive image and above all help greening your businesses.