Industrial Environmental Management. Tapas K. Das

www.wiley.com/go/Das/IEM_1e

1 Why Industrial Environmental Management?

      1.1 Introduction

      This introductory chapter addresses why industrial environmental management is important! Environmental management is a very crucial part of human well‐being that needs to be deeply considered. Formulated design seeks to steer the development process to take advantage of opportunities, avoid hazards, mitigate problems, and prepare people for unavoidable difficulties by improving adaptability and resilience. It is a process concerned with human–environment interactions, and seeks to identify: what is environmentally desirable; what are physical, economic, social, and technological constraints to achieving that process; and what are the most feasible options. Actually there can be no concise universal definition of environmental management; however, it can be briefly summarized as supporting sustainable development; demanding multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary or even holistic approaches; it should integrate and reconcile different development viewpoints, co‐ordinate science, engineering, technology, social, policy making and planning; state proactive processes; timescales and concerns ranging from local to global issues; and one stresses stewardship rather than exploitation while dealing with a world affected by humans.

      In other perspectives, environmental management can be explained as methods of ways when dealing with issues due to the importance of the need to improve environmental stewardship by integrating ecology, policy making, planning, and social development. The goals include sustaining and (if possible) improving existing resources; preventing and overcoming environmental problems; establishing limits; founding and nurturing institutions that effectively support environmental research, monitoring and management resources; warning of threats and identifying positive change opportunities; (where possible) improving quality of life; and finally, identifying new technology or policies that are useful. And moreover, actually environmental management may be subdivided into a number of fields, including the following:

       Environmental economics

       Sustainable development issues

       Environmental assessment, modeling, forecasting, and “hand‐casting”

       Corporate environmental management activities

       Pollution recognition and control

       Environmental enforcement and legislation

       Environmental and development institutions and ethics

       Environmental management systems and quality issues

       Environmental planning and management

       Assessment of stakeholders involved in environmental management

       Environmental perceptions and education

       Community participation

       Natural resources management

       Environmental rehabilitation

       Environmental politics

       Environment aid and institution building

      Generally, the environmental managers must ensure there is optimum balance between environmental protection and allowing human liberty. Then, the question is “how it can be done?” Basically, there are several steps in environmental management implementation. First, we need to identify goals and define problems, then determine appropriate actions, which will be continued as draw‐up plan. Next, implement the plan, which will be followed by ongoing development management. After that monitor and evaluate the situation. If there are adjustments needed, do it. Then finally when the exact model and standards of environmental management are generated, continuous development will be conducted.

The overall objective of environmental management is improved human life quality. It involves the mobilization of resources and the use of government to administer the use of both natural and economic goods and services. It is based on the principles of ecology. It uses systems analysis and conflict resolution to distribute the costs and benefits of development activities throughout the affected populations and seeks to protect the activities of development from natural hazards. Conflict identification is one of the most important tasks in environmental management planning and the resolution of conflicts is a fundamental part of what makes up “environmentally sound development. ISO (International Organization for Standardization) 14000 is a family of standards related to environmental management that exists to help organizations (i) minimize how their operations (processes, etc.) negatively affect the environment (i.e. cause adverse changes to air, water, or land); (ii) comply with applicable laws, regulations, and other environmentally oriented requirements; and (iii) continually improve in the above.

      1.1.1 ISO in Brief

      ISO is the International Organization for Standardization. It has a membership of 160 national standards institutes from countries large and small, industrialized, developing and in transition, in all regions of the world. ISO's portfolio of more than 18 000 standards provides practical tools for all 3 dimensions of sustainable development: economic, environment, and societal.

      ISO standards for business, government, and society as a whole make a positive contribution to the world we live in. They ensure vital features such as quality, ecology, safety, economy, reliability, compatibility, interoperability, conformity, efficiency, and effectiveness. They facilitate trade, spread knowledge, and share technological advances and good management practice. ISO develops only those standards that are required by the market. This work is carried out by experts on loan from the industrial, technical, and business sectors which subsequently put them to use. These experts may be joined by others with relevant knowledge, such as representatives of governmental agencies, testing laboratories, consumer association and academia, and by nongovernmental or other stakeholder organizations that have a specific interest in the issues addressed in the standards. Published under the designation of International Standards, ISO standards represent an international consensus on the state of the art in the technology or good practice concerned.

      1.1.2 ISO and the Environment

      ISO has a multifaceted approach to meeting the needs of all stakeholders from business, industry, governmental authorities, and nongovernmental organizations, as well as consumers, in the field of the environment.

      1 ISO develops standards that help organizations to take a proactive approach to managing environmental issues: the ISO 14000 family of environmental management standards can be implemented in any type of organization in either public or private sectors – from companies to administrations to public utilities.

      2 ISO helps to meet the challenge of climate change with standards for greenhouse gas accounting, verification and emissions trading, and for measuring the carbon footprint of products.

      3 ISO develops standard documents to facilitate the fusion of business and environmental goals by encouraging the inclusion of environmental aspects in product design.

      4 ISO offers a wide‐ranging portfolio of standards for sampling and test methods to deal with specific environmental challenges. It has developed some 570 International Standards for the monitoring of such aspects as the quality of air, water and the soil, as well as noise, radiation, and for controlling the transport of dangerous goods. They also serve in a number of countries as the technical basis for environmental regulations.

      1.1.3 Benefits

ISO 14001 was developed primarily to assist companies with a framework for better management control that can result in reducing their environmental impacts. In addition to improvements in performance, organizations can reap a number of economic benefits, including higher conformance with legislative and regulatory requirements (Sheldon 1997) by adopting the ISO standard. By minimizing the risk of regulatory and environmental liability fines and