Environmental Management Systems

• What is an Environmental Management System?
• EMS Case Studies
• Our Commitment
• The role of the Environment Unit
• What are the benefits of EMS?

An Environmental Management System provides the organisation's management with a structured framework for identifying, evaluating, managing and improving its environmental performance. It helps to ensure the organisation's overall environmental goals, as set out in its environmental policy, are implemented throughout the organisation and that employees, contractors and suppliers know their roles and responsibilities in helping the organisation to achieve them.

Previously Kirklees Council gained EMAS (Eco Management and Audit Scheme) in all council services in November 2003 and has maintained this standard up until the end of October 2010. EMAS is an environmental standard for which participating organisations can seek independent validation. EMAS is a voluntary European Union standard and has been implemented by local authorities, manufacturers and the service industry since the early 1990s. The council's performance against the EMAS standard during this period can be viewed in the Interim Environment Statement covering the reporting period 2005 - end October 2010.

• Case Study: EMAS - A local authority perspective, 2001 (PDF 170kb)
• Case Study: A Practical Guide to EMAS - Kirklees Councils Experiences, 2003 (PDF 58kb)
• Case Study: A case study of achieving EMAS October 2004 (PDF 2Mb)
• Case Study: Environmental Awareness in the Workplace (PDF 233kb)

Kirklees Council is currently reviewing its Environmental Management System to streamline the system and concentrate resources in high impacting areas such as energy reduction and carbon management, procurement and regeneration and investment.

• Provide support and guidance to services implementing their EMS's.
• Provide training and advice on environmental issues.
• Provide environmental awareness materials.
• Co-ordinate a network of environmental champions across the Council.
• Conduct legal compliance and environmental audits of our services.
• Monitor the councils performance against our environmental policy commitments.
• Maintain the council's environment policy and environmental management system.

• Recognition and competitive advantage - Having an EMS and an environment policy that is implemented provides a positive public image that the organisation is committed to reducing its environmental impact. Some organisations for example will only do business with organisations that have a recognised environmental management system or can demonstrate equivalent.
• Increased staff environmental awareness - All staff receive environmental information explaining what their personal impact is on the environment and what simple actions they can take to improve their performance both at home and at work.
• Lower costs - Financial savings by helping identify where savings can be made, for example in the use of energy, water, transport and purchasing, and the reduction of waste.
• Securing funding - Increasingly, funding bodies require evidence of good environmental management from applicants.
• Compliance with environmental legislation - reducing the risk of environmental pollution
• Compliance with environmental legislation - reducing the risk of environmental pollution
• Improvements in service - environmental quality is an important aspect of overall quality of service. An EMS can help ensure that environmental impacts are considered in all areas of an organisations activity.
• Protection of the environment - The establishment of an environmental management system reduces environmental impacts, for example ever increasing environmental problems such as global climate change, deforestation, contamination of land, air and water.