Conducting An Initial Environmental Review

Conducting An Initial Environmental Review in ISO 14001 EMS
An initial environmental review covers all the aspects of an EMS. As a result of this review the organization knows its strengths and weaknesses, risks and opportunities regarding the current status of its EMS. The gap between the requirements of the EMS standard and the actual status of the organization shows which aspects the organization should focus its efforts on to improve the system. This leads directly to the development of an environmental management program that should fill the gaps.
The Environmental review should focus on three key areas:
- Examination of existing environmental management practices and procedures
- Identification of significant environmental impacts and their priority
- Identification of legal and regulatory requirements
1. Examination of Existing Environmental Management Practices and
Procedures
The methodology for assessing existing environmental management practices and procedures is proposed here using a questionnaire. The review team fills out this questionnaire by interviewing appropriate people, by analyzing existing documents and procedures dealing with environmental issues and by collecting information about environmental aspects of the organization's operations, products and services.
By conducting the initial environmental review, an organization-specific profile of strengths and weaknesses can be drawn up. Because the score in each EMS area shows the effort needed in terms of financial and human resources,the organization knows where to focus its efforts when building up an EMS and where the largest effort is needed.

2. Identification of Significant Environmental Aspects and their Priority
An environmental policy requires top management to set priorities regarding environmental aspects. An initial review clearly shows where to set priorities regarding the EMS itself. But, it does not help to set priorities among different environmental problems. Many top managers feel pressure to do something for the environment and thus embark on some form of ・Eenvironmental activism・E often containing many isolated activities, but no clear direction. One way to solve this problem is to develop a so called ・Environmental exposure portfolio・E
The first step of this portfolio analysis is to assess the exposure and therefore the importance of different environmental aspects for an organization's overall performance.
The appropriate perspective and priorities of the environmental policy will differ depending on this preliminary analysis. The analysis should be conducted from the perspective of the stakeholders of the organization, their needs and their importance for the success of the organization. The degree of exposure to different environmental aspects should guide the involvement and perspective of an organization when implementing an EMS. Evaluating exposure to environmental aspects is important, because this exposure is likely to influence the organization's success sooner or later, either through new legislation, public or consumer perception and behavior or otherwise.
The analysis of the expected exposure of an organization to different environmental problems and the weight given to these aspects by various stakeholders enables management to focus on environmental issues that are a high priority to the organization. This is represented in the quadrant in the upper right corner of the environmental exposure portfolio. However, the two quadrants on the left must also be observed, although less vigorously. Issues with low public priority, to which the firm contributes heavily become a problem as soon as the perception of the stakeholders and the public environmental policy changes (the quadrant in the upper left corner of the portfolio). That this can happen very rapidly is obvious, for example from Shell`s ・Brent Spar・Edumping case (detailed information about this case is available from Shell or Greenpeace at their respective WWW-sites). Investments in new production technology, products and services can increase the environmental impact of the organization when not anticipated early enough. In this case, a problem ranked in the lower right corner of the portfolio would shift to the field with the highest priority. Problems ranked in the lower left corner are of no priority. No measures should be taken here.

3. Identification of Legal and Regulatory Requirements
The identification of legal and regulatory requirements assesses two levels of an organization:
- production-related environmental regulations
- product- and service-related environmental regulations
The former addresses the production department while the latter addresses the marketing
and R&D departments. Basically, three questions must be answered:
- Which are the relevant environmental regulations? (= target)
- Is the current situation in the organization known? (= actual)
- Does the organization comply with relevant regulations? (=gap)
The methodology used here is a questionnaire. To obtain information about environmental regulations the following information sources can be used:
- governmental authorities
- industry associations
- daily newspaper
- university publications (law departments)