What is Your Environmental Management Strategy?

Posted by Daniel Stouffer on October 31st, 2009 filed in Global Warming


Top notch multinational corporations have long been aware of their responsibility to a broad range of stakeholders, over and above those who might traditionally be the center of attention for the average business. Almost 80% of the world’s biggest companies have a focused environmental management strategy as part of the overall goal to attain corporate sustainability.

In the carbon economy of tomorrow, the environmental management strategy formulated by a company will be a centerpiece of its very operation. It cannot be set aside from its ultimate objective, as a broad range of stakeholders, not just pure environmentalists are watching every move.

The size of a footprint was brought into focus when the International Standardization Organization produced its famous 14,000 series on corporate sustainability issues. It was realized that this footprint was far too big in the majority of cases and that a move to change was overdue. This required an analysis and a move to decrease this impact.

While the ISO 14,000 series standards have been adopted worldwide as organizations seek to become certified and recognized as in compliance, over the last few years the concept of sustainability has become far more focused. Research, findings and statistics constantly underline the need for us all to become more sustainable and to help reverse the significant damage that has already been caused to our climate. Every organization must elevate their environmental management strategy to the status of urgent.

For an environmental management strategy to be effective, it must analyze several areas. It must identify its stakeholders, understand their position and their requirements and formulate a plan accordingly. The enterprise must conduct a complete lifecycle analysis, working through its organization from A-Z and attaining a complete understanding of all its operating procedures.

A typical organization cannot hope to achieve a working environmental management strategy until and unless it puts its own house in order first. This means that unless it is fully aware of its actual costs of doing business, then it is unlikely to be working at optimum efficiency. Until it achieves this status it cannot adequately address environmental issues.

Consumers all around the world are becoming much more educated in climate change issues and now understand what carbon emissions contribute to this problem. They are turning to organizations to take action and want to see proof that they have an active environmental management strategy in place to fight the issue.

It is likely that legislation is around the corner and even if it isn’t, a company must not ignore the prospect of reputational harm through taking no action on climate issues. The organization must look at all its software systems, procedures and solutions as it tracks its energy and resource usage, waste management and carbon emissions. Once it has all its liabilities in check, it will be ahead of the game and ready to make further changes down the road.

Daniel Stouffer has a lot of data about environmental management strategy and how a visit to www.verisae.com can aid you. This and other unique content ” articles are available with free reprint rights.

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