Environmental Aspects
Some people have a difficult time understanding what environmental aspects are. Simply put, they are the characteristics, features, or outputs of a company's activity that cause changes in the environment.
Environmental Aspect Impact Identification
As a part of the PDCA planning phase, identifying your organization's aspects is very important. You'll need to decide if you can control the aspect. For an EMS, only focus on those aspects you can control. For example:
- You can't control everything about how raw materials are made, but you do have control over who you purchase from, which materials you use, and how you manage those materials during our production process.
- Although you may not always have control over how electricity is generated at the power plant from which you purchase electricity, you can exercise some control over how much electricity you use.
After you identify environmental aspects you can control, rank them using a predetermined set of criteria. Each company or facility should develop criteria that are important to achieving its specific environmental and business goals and meeting its environmental policy commitments.
Let's look at examples of possible ranking criteria that is used at various types of facilities:
- actual or potential environmental impact
- costs associated with addressing the aspect or potential impact
- potential savings from addressing the aspect
- pollution prevention potential from addressing an aspect or impact
- risk of noncompliance associated with an aspect
- community concerns associated with an aspect
The National Air and Space Administration (NASA) has an excellent process for identifying and prioritizing environmental aspects to determine significant aspects. You can also download the NASA Procedural Requirement (NPR) as a model EMS program.
Knowledge Check Choose the best answer for the question.
3-2. What are the "causes" of the changes we see in the environment?
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