Introduction
With an environmental management system (EMS), organisations are implementing their environmental policy, which defines their environmental responsibilities in the context of their corporate culture, the characteristics of their business and their aspirations for improvement. The implementation of a national or international environmental management system standard encourages compliance, pollution prevention and enables more objective performance comparisons between organisations.
The standards require the definition of targets and objectives for the EMS helping with the system requirements to facilitate these. A certification or validation by an independent auditor confirms compliance of the EMS with the relevant standards. A certified/registered/validated EMS gives an organisation the opportunity to demonstrate their environmental credibility.
There are a number of different national and international EMS standards. In this chapter, you will find the descriptions of the most important EU Regulations and International Standards for EMS, for example the EMAS Regulation or the ISO 14001 standard.
