Environmental Management Systems : Enabling Tools Towards Sustainability?

In recent years since the widespread adoption of the ISO 14001 international standard and the continuous update of the European EMAS scheme, along with the effects of many other environmental management schemes, environmental management systems (EMSs) have gained increasing acceptance among companies. In fact, the latest 2010 ISO survey reports that as many as 250,000 ISO 14001:2005 certificates have been issued in 155 countries (The ISO Survey of certifications 2010). The development of a basic environmental management system is based on:– An initial environmental analysis identifying the company status with respect tothe environment;– The identification of an environmental policy, providing guidance and settingcompany directions with respect to the environment;– The determination of objectives, set coherently with the environmental policy;– The installation of a management system (processes, responsibilities,documents, data, etc) supporting the achievement of identified objectives;– The usage of feedback and control mechanisms, such as a system of corrective/preventive actions, management reviews and internal/external audits.The instantiation of an EMS in a company requires interpretation of requirements and adaptation of the management system in relation to the application constraints. As pointed out in Ghisellini and Thurston (2005) with respect to the ISO 14001 EMS, the result is a management and not a performance standard, because the continuous improvement requirement does not strictly imply reduction in environmental impacts