april ma y - AE.AE

15
ENVIRONMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Environment Management System based on ISO14001 is
a collation of international standards for establishing and
continually improving the environmental practices and
performance of organizations irrespective of what industries
they are in to. This standard was first published on 1st October,
1996, so it was a new trend on the global business scenario. Some
countries and companies are quickly accepting it depends on the
moral stand and corporate as well as environmental orientation.
Some countries and organisations are resistant to implement
the standard requirement of ISO 14001. Many companies
already have Environmental practices based on a management
program that may be different than ISO 14000 requirement, so
their disinclination is understandable since they have invested in
their existing systems. For those companies who have no system,
their resistance is also understandable, because they have no
experience with the benefits such a system can provide.
The intension of the article is to demonstrate some of the benefits
of an Environment Management System and ISO 14000. These
are mainly identified into five categories:
Increased profits
Operations convenience
Corporate Image for Marketing
Regulatory compliance
Social Commitment
The first and foremost matter is the rise in profits, and may be the
most startling for those who are prejudiced and resistant with the
EMS. Offering customers with a lesser price by reducing the cost
of production is one way those EMS donate to increasing profits.
A company which implemented EMS in an efficient manner
finding that it can help reduce the quantities of materials and
energy used to make products when the management system
includes analyzing the raw materials, by products, and waste.
There is another method in EMS in reviewing the existing
product design process and refining, product formulation and
manufacturing processes, and eco friendly cost effective packing
etc. It can reduce the quantity of material inputs, byproducts,
wastes and, therefore, costs. For example, Emdad under Al
Bawardi Enterprises used the EMS in recycling the solid waste
paper of more than 791 Kg of Paper from their discarded files for
recycling. All the confidential papers are shredded before delivery.
The papers are collected by an authorised waste recycling agent
and they have given a receipt. This receipt will be a proof of
recycling and will serve as a record to help them to get discount
on Waste Tax imposed by the Municipality at the time of Trade
License Renewal.
This is a typical example of how the ISO 14000 improves the costsaving
function of existing EMS in many ways while satisfying the
legal requirement of the land. Every personnel in the company
from top to bottom strata in the company should be conversant
about pollution prevention and their individual contribution.
This harnesses the efforts and creativity of everyone in the
organization.
EMS also helps in aligning the operations of the company
through identifying the occurrences of redundancy in daily
operational efforts for regulatory compliance. These can be
reduced or even eliminated, thus helping the company for