Environmental Management Systems

Cicerone Ionescu, Ph.D

Director, KPMG Romania Environmental Consulting

Introduction

Many organizations in Romania have developed their own methods to manage environmental problems and set up their own environmental management systems (EMS). Yet these EMS were set up ad-hoc in a contextual manner, which - even if meeting the momentary needs of the company - are not acknowledged at a larger scale, as the respective systems are not underpinned by standards and norms accepted at European and international levels.

Environmental issues have recently drawn public attention, particularly the certifiable EMS implementation. And although on November 1, 1999 only 2 Romanian firms were certified ISO 14001, at present a large number of companies are in different stages of EMS development and implementation heralding the same spectacular evolution of ISO 14001 certified companies as for the ISO 9000 certification.

Role of international standards

Environmental international standards may play various roles in a company’s development. They can:

Some of these standards are based on systemic approaches pursuing the model of the ISO 9000 norms. Other standards, related to products, represent practical tools for determining the environmental impacts generated by the production process, by the utilization and disposal of specific products and substances. These standards bring about economic advantages to companies that pay special attention to environmental protection issues. As the recent experience in the domain shows, the application of international standards may trigger an important change in the professional culture and mentality of a company.

The organizations that deliberately or compelled by external factors have made a thorough analysis of their own business conduct, have been surprised to see how easy it is to pass from traditional environmental practices to a systemic environmental management and how many beneficial results this change may bring to their environmental and economic performances.

The next figure presents the structural difference between the traditional and systemic types of management.

It is obvious that the circle on the left describes an approach of the type ”wait and see what happens”, which allows for the same problems to re-occur later on. It is the representation of a “conservative” and risky behavior, as it ignores the prudence principle. The circle on the right shows a more dynamic approach based on the continuous improvement principle: the causes of the problem are first identified and then they are handled so that the negative environmental impacts would not occur again.

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