Environmental Management Case Study Example

Environmental Management Case Study Example Environmental Management Case Study â€" Assignment Example > 28 December, 2010.IntroductionThere are interactions between the various constituents of the environment like the different life forms, energy and material resources as well as the atmosphere. For instance, alterations in biosphere composition influence the atmosphere composition. Most important are the effect of human activity on the environment, and the outcomes of these effects on human well-being. All environmental problems are mainly related to the use and distribution of resources, affecting water, air as well as soil quality and quantity. The growth of population and economic wealth, along with the increase of several processes, like urbanization and industrialization, has led to a high consumption of natural resources and as a result, negative effects on the sustainability of the ecological quality have risen (Cortés, and Poch p. 5). An environmental management system (EMS) is a formal approach to managing the aspects of an organization’s activities, products and servic es that have, or could have an impact on the environmentEnvironmental management and management systemsAccording to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), an environmental management system (EMS) is that part of the overall management system that includes organizational structure, planning activities, responsibilities, practices, procedures, processes as well as resources for developing, implementing, achieving, reviewing and maintaining the environmental policy. An EMS enables private companies, federal and state agencies as well as other organizations to establish, and assess the effectiveness of processes to set environmental policy and objectives, achieve compliance, and demonstrate such compliance to others. In reference to the 2007 Sheffield floods, the EMSs are discussed as a means to offer standardized frameworks from which individualized performance criteria can be established and measured. Therefore, an organization can know whether it has actually redu ced levels of resource consumption or environmental emissions rather than whether it has merely met a regulation. Due to such catastrophes, there are international standards that cover EMSs that have been developed to provide organizations with the elements of an EMS that can be integrated with other management functions to help them attain environmental and economical goals. For instance, ISO 14000 is one of the standards that supports environmental protection and prevent pollution in balance with socioeconomic needs. ISO 14000 entails sixteen standards that handle organizational issues and products. ISO 14001 is the EMS specification document outlining the requirements that an organization must meet for its EMS to be registered or certified to the standard. It is a tool to measure the effectiveness off environmental management programs. When addressing such scenarios as the 2007 Sheffield floods, it is important to know that when an EMS is integrated into an organization’s bus iness decision making processes, it can improve program management and enhance environmental performance. Also, when an EMS is incorporated into central management systems and organizational strategies, there is less need for external oversight as core business operations take ownership of environmental responsibility. Thus organizations ought to implement EMSs within their organization. The full cost of implementing an EMS includes the salary and time costs of in-house staff devoted to the project, as well as costs of any certification program. Most of organizations have incorporated environmental management systems in their culture but there is need for improvement. When the culture of an organization is changing, the most challenging aspect facing such organizations is how to institute new management systems that require major change in their internal culture, away from compliance-based reporting and toward more active environmental stewardship. To achieve this and make these p rograms successful, organizations need to incorporate the critical elements of outreach, education as well as training since changing the culture requires analysis of how things were done in the past and what was wrong in that approach, as well as why the new system is better. Thus to avoid such disaster I future, organizations need to shift from environmental protection and prevention of pollution by involving all of their employees, building an infrastructure to support them in taking responsibility for the environmental aspects of their jobs, as well as educating them concerning environmental issues (Federal Facilities Council et al. 1999 p. 5).