Operational Controls in Environmental Management Systems: Ensuring Sustainable Practices

Operational controls should be established wherever they are necessary to keep significant environmental impacts under control and ensure the organization can meet its environmental objectives and compliance obligations.

Depending on the organization, controls may be needed for:

• Waste generation and disposal
• Chemical and hazardous-material handling
• Energy and water consumption
• Air emissions
• Wastewater discharge
• Procurement and supplier activities
• Contractor operations
• Maintenance activities
• Emergency situations
• Product or service-related environmental impacts

The controls should reflect the organization’s actual activities, environmental aspects, risks, compliance obligations, and objectives. They should also be communicated to relevant employees, contractors, and other parties where their activities can affect environmental performance.

Based upon the scope of its environmental management system and the actions determined, the organization should determine the necessary operational controls, using a life cycle perspective, including for operations related to functions, such as research and development, design, sales, marketing, procurement and facility management.

The type and extent of control or influence to be applied during the life cycle stages should be defined within the environmental management system.

A life cycle perspective should be considered as early as possible, i.e. in the design and development process. This will provide a better opportunity to make improvements to the overall environmental performance of activities, processes, products or services, and help the organization reduce the potential for transferring adverse environmental impacts to other stages. This will result in greater value to the organization and protection of the environment.

Many organizations can have their significant environmental aspects in the use phase or in the application of information provided by the organization. Examples of methods to influence significant environmental aspects could then include:

• Providing education on how to manage relevant environmental impacts.

• Providing easy access to information (e.g. on websites, like FAQ’s).

• Establishing user groups for sharing information and keeping users updated.

As applicable, the organization should consider how external providers and outsourced processes can affect its ability to manage its environmental aspects and fulfil its compliance obligations. An organization should establish operational controls that are needed, such as documented procedures, contracts or supplier agreements, or end user instructions, and communicate them to its contractors, suppliers and users, as appropriate. An outsources process can be subject to control or influence. An outsourced process is one that fulfils all of the following criteria:

1. The function or process is integral to the organization’s functioning.

2. The function or process is needed for the management system to achieve its intended outcome.

3. The liability for the function or process conforming to requirements is retained by the organization.

4. The organization and the external provider have an integral relationship, e.g. one where the process is perceived by interested parties as being carried out by the organization.