Use Of Environmental Management Systems Research Articles

Use of environmental management systems in settlement of enforcement actions

AbstractThe use of environmental management systems (EMS) has risen dramatically in the U.S. over the past few years. Contributing to that rise is EPA's and other state environmental regulatory authorities' increasing acceptance and use of EMSs. The initial focus on EMSs by the EPA was in consent decrees and settlement agreements between the agency and private firms. It is an important new enforcement strategy and signals a change in how EPA views application and use of EMSs and the ISO 14001 standard. This trend has spread to state regulatory authorities with no abatement in sight. EMSs in settlement actions represent an exciting and new “win‐win” strategy for both the regulators and the firms subject to the enforcement action.This paper addresses the brief history of these strategies, and the importance of this new enforcement strategy, and cites three important case studies where EMSs were an important part in resolving enforcement actions. The first is the ASARCO case, where an EMS was first used in a settlement agreement. The second is the Firewall Forward, Inc., case, the first EMS as a supplemental environmental project (SEP) in a settlement action, and the third was AAA Plating, in which several EMS implementation innovations were applied within the settlement. The paper concludes with a discussion of predicted trends regarding the use of EMSs/ISO 14001 standard by EPA and other enforcement authorities based on emerging practices in private industry.

Environmental management systems, communicative action and organizational learning

AbstractIn recent years, an increasing number of private as well as public organizations have been engaged with implementation and use of environmental management systems (EMSs). This raises questions as to the reasons for implementing an EMS and, not least, about the roles and contributions of an EMS in an organization. Based in particular on research on contemporary municipal environmental management in Sweden, and also drawing on EMS research and experiences in other countries, this paper argues that an EMS may be understood not only as a technical tool for analytical management, as is traditionally done, but also as a tool for communicative action and organizational learning. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

The Role of Voluntary Industry Standards in Environmental Supply‐Chain Management

SummaryOur article uses a new institutional economics (NIE) framework to explore the role of voluntary industry standards in the development and implementation of environmental supplier‐management programs in the computer industry. We examine two different voluntary standards, one for the management of design for environment (DfE) in the semiconductor fabrication equipment sector and the other for assessing the implementation and use of environmental management systems throughout the computer industry supply chain. We compare and contrast the two standards to explain why the former was widely adopted and has helped integrate DfE into buyer‐supplier relations among adopters, whereas the latter failed to gain acceptance. In line with NIE logic, both standards aimed to lower transaction and customization costs by setting “rules of the game” for interfirm transactions that would help simplify and routinize novel environmental supply‐chain programs and activities. Their differential success can be elucidated in terms of how well each met the NIE criteria for remediableness and legitimacy. We conclude that voluntary standards have the potential to play an important role in promoting DfE in industrial supply chains. We further conclude that NIE provides a conceptual framework of great value to industrial ecologists who analyze how industry standards and other institutions help firms move toward more sustainable supply‐chain management practices.

Managing the environmental performance of production facilities in the electronics industry: more than application of the concept of cleaner production

This paper approaches the production facilities in the supply chain primarily from an Original Equipment Manufacturer’s perspective as the requesting party in the scope of environmental quality and secondarily from a production facility’s perspective. From the perspective of the customer as well as the supplier, aspects such as price, delivery, technology etc. play an ongoing role, while environmental quality is a new aspect. With respect to environmental quality, the paper discusses the existing situation in the facilities, like the use of environmental management systems, the notions of environmental performance, green procurement and environmental quality in relation to cost structures of facilities. The paper also introduces a new method of benchmarking environmental performances of facilities. Environmental performance expresses the total production behaviour of the production facility. A link into a business perspective is shown on the basis of the environmental performance. In this scope the result of a worldwide assessment of 25 printed board production facilities is discussed and a conclusion is drawn.

Finnish waste policy—effects and effectiveness

More than 20 ordinances on waste have been issued in Finland since the National Waste Act came into force in 1994. Effects and effectiveness of this regulation have recently been analysed in an R&D project called WAPO. The materials and methods used in WAPO were mainly based on case studies on regional and company scales. According to WAPO, the infrastructure of waste management and the recovery of wastes have greatly improved in Finland in the 1990s. By contrast, the waste policy has not been able to upgrade waste prevention, the primary objective in the hierarchy defined by the Finnish Waste Act and the EUs waste policy. To overcome this drawback, the use of economic policy instruments are recommended to be extended and directed towards enhancing efficient use of natural resources and materials. Self-regulation within industry, e.g. the use of environmental management systems (EMSs), is one solution that has been proposed as an alternative to more intensive use of economic instruments. Although the attitudes and experiences of enterprises with respect to EMSs are positive, their real influence on company behaviour needs to be further studied. Extended producer responsibility (EPR) systems in waste management appear to have great potential. However, their main effect hitherto has been intensified recovery of waste. This fact may have influenced the slightly dissatisfied general attitude towards the Finnish EPR systems. New initiatives are needed in waste policy because the amounts of waste in Finland, as well as in other parts of Europe, are continually growing. Simultaneously, the scope of policy should be drastically broadened from mere wastes to society's overall cycles of materials and products.

Introducing environmental management systems in forest recreation: results from a consultation exercise

This paper outlines the consultation of recreation managers and stakeholders in forests in the United Kingdom, Portugal and Finland regarding their use of Environmental Management Systems (EMS) to plan, manage and monitor visitor impacts, The results show that there is a critical mass of sites already using the components of an EMS or capable of doing so, with some potential to fully implement an EMS. This informs the development of criteria of an EU funded feasibility study for an ecolabel for forest recreation and tourism sites.

Environmental knowledge and the adoption of ready made environmental management solutions

In this article we study organizational learning with respect to environmental management or corporate greening in six UK water and electricity utilities, concentrating on information acquisition and dissemination. We find that companies make use of a variety of information acquisition strategies, including learning from experience, e.g. environmental incidents leading to prosecution; learning by observing other organizations (bench-marking); by importing environmental knowledge through outside experts and management systems and by building up an information searching and collecting system. Environmental managers play a heavy role in acquiring and disseminating information. We feel that, while organizations try to rationalize environmental learning and make it as efficient as possible, a lack of redundancy of information, heavy reliance on a limited number of outside sources of expertise and the use of environmental management systems may also bring with it the danger of institutionalizing environmental management and closing environmental questions prematurely.

LIFE-OF-PROJECT ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT STRATEGY: CASE STUDY OF THE CONFEDERATION BRIDGE PROJECT, CANADA

The developer of the Confederation Bridge Project in eastern Canada is successfully implementing a life-of-project environmental management strategy for this privately-funded public project. The cornerstone of this strategy is the Environmental Management Plan (EMP), an umbrella document which describes how the developer is managing all environmental aspects of the project throughout the construction phase and the subsequent 35-year period of private ownership. The EMP is comprised of several dynamic plans and programmes. Owing to unique circumstances, the EMP was developed prior to the completion of the environmental assessment, providing an example of the benefit of such, especially for a finance-build-own-operate-transfer infrastructure project. The experience of this project leads to the conclusion that the use of environmental management systems to encapsulate environmental management strategies early in project planning would be beneficial.