How Are You Planning Your Green Business?

Green Business is about a good management of a range of issues including reduced carbon footprint and good energy management but also including a broader environmental sustainability, within a practical environmental management system. The most effective system is ISO 14001. Many other approaches are less than effective

There is a wide variety of concepts that are understood by some as environmental management systems or EMS and this varies in different industries. The concept has evolved over time. Essentially the name says it all - a system for managing actual and potential environmental problems.

Owners and managers setting out to have a green business do not always achieve their aim of environmental sustainability and may not even include reduced carbon footprint and good energy management.

Many industry groups have developed industry wide simplistic programs that they call EMS that actually miss the S for system and some really only have a checklist approach that is based on an "average" or "typical" business in that industry. So effectively they also miss much of the environment. Many do not really involve any management either. Some approaches select only a superficial list of major environmental aspects to manage because the list has been developed so that is is generic to cover a wide range of businesses and to minimize the need for the business owner to be fully involved. In this case it is difficult to understand how any process of continual improvement can result.

Some of these programs are as simple as a checklist, or what many involved call a "tick and flick" exercise. These are barely even educational for the business owner and have no ongoing benefits like reduction of costs or legal protection.

The problem even with the programs where the business owners and o r managers spend a lot of time filling in forms and doing communication with neighbours, remains the lack of real understanding of how to identify and why they need to manage the varied environmental risks in their individual businesses and they can easily miss things and even place themselves at risk of legal implications in areas that are not typical and so not covered by the so called system..

An effective management system needs individual businesses to identify and understand what their environmental risks are or may be. These risks need to be managed and there also needs to be a feedback system going into a regularly reviewed system for continual improvement. Ausits carried out by trained independent auditors, whether internal or external; although the greatest benefit does come from employing and independent external auditing body such as a certification body.

Some environmental management systems and particularly some of the early ISO 14001 systems that were based on outdated engineering and military approaches to ISO systems are overly paper heavy and full of jargon resulting in something that is probably unsuitable for small business and farms. These systems have given ISO 140001 a bad name in some circles.

Unfortunately many consultants have come from an old style quality management background without any real understanding of or training in the environment. The training to upgrade from quality auditing only involves doing a three day seminar with a minimal assessment by a training organization. Then they audit with a rigid paper based approach and do a serious disservice to both their clients and to the auditing industry.

Small to medium businesses benefit from a simpler approach based on a real understanding of the issues involved and a genuine understanding of risks. Such systems are based on ISO 14001 and have a real emphasis on keeping things simple and minimizing paperwork. These give very real benefits to the businesses involved