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Environmental, Health, Safety, and Quality
Management Services for Business and Industry, and Federal, State, and
Local Government.
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Developing Your EMS - The Three Key
Tasks the You Must Do:
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Identify environmental aspects |
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Address
environmental impacts |
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Define
significance |
What Are
Aspects and Impacts?
An aspect
is an element of an organization's activities,
products, or services that can interact with the environment.
It is a constituent part of the business.
These are the typical methodologies used to identify environmental aspects:
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Value Chain Method: life cycle analysis |
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Materials Identification Method: captures
information about chemical and hazardous substances, but often overlooks
aspects such as water and energy |
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Regulatory Compliance Method: Focus on the
substances that are regulated |
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Process Flow Method
(Recommended): Easiest and most comprehensive. Delineates every
process and support activity on a process flow diagram |
An impact
is any change to the environment, whether adverse or beneficial, wholly
or partially resulting from an organization’s activities, products or services.
Examples:
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Aspect (Cause) |
Potential Impact (Effect) |
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Emissions of volatile organic compounds |
Increase in ground level ozone |
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Spills and leaks |
Soil and groundwater contamination |
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Electricity use |
Air pollution, global warming |
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Use of recycled paper |
Conservation of natural resources |
Significant aspects must be
considered in establishing objectives and targets.
Organizations may select
categories of activities, products, or services to
identify those aspects most likely to have a significant impact.
Note: the focus of
environmental objectives and targets is to eliminate or reduce the aspect,
thereby preventing or reducing pollution.
Some
categories of aspects include:
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Those
related to an organization's operations; e.g., manufacturing |
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Those
related to services offered or used by an organization; e.g., shipping,
maintenance |
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Those
related to an organization's products; e.g., containers |
The following are normally
considered in evaluating environmental aspects:
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Air emissions |
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Solid and hazardous wastes
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Contamination of land
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Local issues (e.g. noise,
odor, dust, traffic, appearance, etc.) |
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Water effluents
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Land use |
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Raw material and resource
use |
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Normal and abnormal
conditions (e.g., start-up, shutdown, emergencies) |
How Do We Identify Environmental
Aspects?
Environmental aspects are
identified after the process(es) have been fully defined. For each process
item, a questionnaire, similar to the following, is used to identify the
aspect:
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Operational |
Service |
Product |
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Is energy used? |
Is service provided on company premises? |
Does the product require enclosure in a
container? |
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Are natural resources used? |
Is service provided on customer premises? |
Is the product (or its container) enclosed in
any packaging? |
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Are chemicals used? |
Is energy used? |
Is any portion of the product, container, or
packaging reusable or recyclable? |
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Are other materials used? |
Are chemicals used? |
Does proper use of the product rely on an
energy source? |
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Is any packaging used? |
Are other materials used? |
Is the packaging disposed of by the end user? |
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Is any packaging used? |
Is the container disposed of by the end user? |
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Is the product disposed of by the end user? |
The following is sample
output from the results of the questionnaire(s):
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Activity |
Aspect |
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Operate Vehicles |
Spillage/leakage from vehicles |
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Air emission from vehicles |
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Fuel usage from vehicles |
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Noise from vehicles |
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Air emissions due to fire |
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Perform Vehicle Painting |
Spillage/leakage of paint |
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Air emissions from spills |
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Air emissions from grinding/paints/solvents |
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Paint/solvent usage in painting and cleanup |
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Incidental use of other materials while
painting |
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Noise from painting operations |
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Energy usage to operate painting equipment |
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Air emissions due to fires |
How Do We Assess Environmental
Impacts?
Impacts can be classified in
terms of processes, products, and services. Significance may extent to
potential for impact, not just actual impact.
Organize
impacts by:
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Operational area: Those associated with specific tasks, work stations, or other
activities
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Media:
Cluster all water-related, for example, impacts as one group. Ditto with
air and waste.
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Potential
for accidents and emergency situations.
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Actual
impacts: Consolidates the total array of impacts
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Evaluating Impacts
After
impacts are established, the magnitude of the impact must be assessed.
Here are some evaluation criteria:
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Severity (common) |
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Likelihood (common) |
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Frequency (common) |
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Boundaries |
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Controllability |
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Regulatory status |
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Reportability |
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Stakeholder concerns |
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Duration |
The most common scales used
for impact evaluation are severity, likelihood, and frequency. Generally, a
scale of one to five is used. For example:
Severity Scale:
5=Severe/catastrophic: very
harmful or potentially fatal; great effort to correct and recover
4=Serious: harmful, but not potentially fatal, difficult to correct but
recoverable
3=Moderate: somewhat harmful, correctable
2=Mild: little potential for harm, easily correctable
1=Harmless: no potential for harm, correctable
Likelihood Scale:
5=Very likely: high
probability (90 percent or more) that an aspect will result in a detectable
impact
4=Likely: strong probability (68 percent to 89 percent) that an aspect will
results in a detectable impact
3=Moderate: reasonable probability (34 percent to 67 percent that an aspect will
result in a detectable impact
2=Low: low probability (11ercent to 33 percent) that an aspect will result in a
detectable impact
1=Remote: very unlikely (less that 10 percent) that an aspect will result in a
detectable impact
Frequency Scale:
5=Continuous: occurs three
times per week (on average) or more often
4=Repeated: occurs one to two times per week (on average)
3=Regular: occurs monthly (on average)
2=Intermittent: occurs quarterly (on average)
1=Seldom: occurs two times per year (on average) or less often
Organizations can employ any
criteria that it deems appropriate. Cost, effect on production, and other
similar consideration are more appropriate in determining which impacts will be
addressed through environmental objectives and targets.
A key consideration in
impact evaluation is inter-rater reliability; that is, the ability of different
evaluators to make the same, correct determination about an impact as it
reflects a specific criterion. Inter-rater reliability is enhanced by a clear,
concise operational definition for every score within a particular scale.
Here are some things to
remember:
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Scores should be
multiplied when the values assigned to measured attributes are unrelated to
each other. |
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Scores should be added
when the values of attributes are related to each other. |
How Do We
Evaluate Significance?
It is up to the organization
to determine significance. Three common factors:
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Regulatory significance |
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Stakeholder interest |
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Percentile ranking |
You must
clearly define the method that you use.
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