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Organisations Businesses Env management systems and beyond
Environmental Management
Bath Spa University
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Organisations/Businesses Env
management systems and beyond
Aims
What is sustainability and sustainable business? What drives businesses to be sustainable? How are env. Impacts managed in business? What is the role of auditing? What are the key challenges to implementation?
Underlying issues - Population - Energy - Climate - Water - Biodiversity
Sustainability
“Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” - Bruntland Report for the World Commission on Environment and Development
Sustainable development is a process of achieving human development through the sensitive management of effects
How do we achieve sustainable development? (SD) There are 3 dimensions - Social - Economic - Environmental Eg. UNEP - Leave no one behind and provide a life of dignity for all - Leave something behind by increasing natural, social, and economic capital to achieve greater resilience and secure future generations’ livlihoods. - Live within our means and achieve greater prosperity in an inclusive manner within the capacity of the earth’s life support system
What is a corporate?
Definition “relating to a large company or group”
Big businesses, multinational, also SMEs
Some of the world’s largest economies
Some basic accounting - Conventional cost benefit analysis considered social and env impacts as externalities - In classic CBA, externalities do not feature in the bottom line, total cost - But who pays?? Fuckin all of us eventually
The triple bottom line - An expanded range of values for measuring organisational and societal success - Takes into account env and social performance in addition to financial - About stakeholders rather than shareholders
SHAREEHOLDERS
- Have invested in the company, have a financial interest in its success
- Prefer the company to take actions that will increase share price
STAKEHOLDERS
- Are invested but not financially
- Customers reliant upon its services
- Communities reliant upon it for employment
- Living within the env that the company can impact
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) - A commitment to CSR is some form of TBL reporting - Alignment of corp goals w those of society - Focused on the env soc link and provision of basic needs - CSR is the operationalisation of the strategic role of business in achieving sustainable development - Being accountable for, and taking actions
Corporate Sustainability (CS) - Development from CSR,sometimes considered synonymous - Critisism of CSR as corporate greenwash - Env more embedded in CS - A more long term view - Greater focus on the value chain (from suppliers to operations to partners to end- consumers) - Less PR, more management
Why should corporations care? - Exercise - corporate citizen - why do you care? - As individuals, consider the env and soc dimensions that might influence what you buy and give examples within each
Good business sense - Operational cost-saving - Energy and resource efficiency - Better financial performance - Increased ability to attract top talent - Economic saving - New markets and better collaboration
Reputation and Trust - Transparency and communication with stakeholders - Better brand recognition - Increased sales and customer loyalty - Ethical practice
‘Management’ of externalitites - Only one planet and businesses want to survive - Also a management of risk by increasing resilience and preparedness, eg. - New policy or regulation - Operational risk - Reputational risk Other sustainability tools (some) - Enviromental management systems (EMS) - ISO - Energy management systems (ISO50001 standard) - Carbon disclosure project (CDP) - Dow Jones Sustainability (corporate performance index) - CIPS index (supply chain performance index)
Environmental Management Systems (EMS) - A business tool (voluntary standard) - A structured, pro-active way of managing an organisation’s significant environmental impacts - Industry standards - Acorn approach - ISO14001 (international) - ecocampus - EMAS Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EU) - In-house - Analogous to ISO9000 quality assurance series
ISO
- Specifies the requirements for an environmental management system
- What the system must achieve/address
- Requires continual improvement (audit)
- But no absolute requirements for env performance
- Various industry focus groups have their own ‘standards’
- Eg ISO17776 risk assessment for petroleum industry
EMS Key Components - Enviromental policy - Continual improvement commitment vital - Legal register - Enables compliance - Aspects and impacts - Review, process mapping - Procedures - How things are done - Targets and monitoring (audit) - Reporting system - verification
Activities,aspects, and impacts
Four steps:
1 activities, services, products
Activities are parts of the core business
Services support core activities
Products are good offered to the market
2 environmental aspects
•An element of an organization's activities, products or services that can interact with the environment
•These can be direct (on site), or indirect (off site)
3 the significance of environmental aspects
•Set criteria for testing significance
•Not all aspects are necessarily significant, and can be positive
•Case-by-case, dependent upon legislation, stakeholder interest, potential to cause harm
4 actions to mitigate significant environmental aspects
Determining Significance
•The purpose of the evaluation of environmental aspects is focusing on what matters the most
•Significant environmental aspects are the main focus of your organization’s Environmental Management System
•In assessing the significance you should consider:
•potential to cause environmental harm •size and frequency of the aspect •importance to the stakeholders of the organization
Organisations Businesses Env management systems and beyond
Module: Environmental Management
University: Bath Spa University
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