Practical EMS tools

Environmental management system - EMS - refers to managing an organisation's environmental programs in comprehensive, systematic, planned and documented manner. It includes an organisational structure, project planning and resources for developing, implementing and maintaining policy for environmental protection.

An EMS is geared with the PDCA cycle: Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle. The diagram shows the progression of first developing an environmental policy, planning it, and then implementing it. The process also includes checking the system and acting on it. The model is continuous because an EMS is a process of continual improvement in which an organization is constantly reviewing and revising the system.

A number of EMS were developed to answer to the specific needs of organisations. Indeed, SMEs face difficulties to support the heavy administrative and bureaucratic burden of some EMS more adapted for bigger companies. Meanwhile, some organisations are at the starting point of implementing their first EMS and are then keener on easy and simple system more entitle to facilitate the adhesion of the whole company.

At European level, some work is being carried out to study and organize the transferability of successful EMS.

A repertoire of very innovative and useful EMS tools can be found in this chapter of the library.