QMS & EMS London

Environmental matters need to be better integrated into overall corporate strategies, an analysis of annual reports of FTSE 350 companies has found. Although environmental factors were identified as principal business risks by 41% of reports studied, only 27% of companies reflected these in their key performance indicators (KPIs), which are used by management to monitor the company’s progress, according to a report of the findings.  The analysis was carried out by the Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB), a consortium of international NGOs and businesses working to make reporting of environmental risk and impacts mainstream.

After the launch of the IEMA quality mark scheme in 2011, opportunities arose to improve practice among environment impact assessment (EIA) professionals in the UK. In particular, it was felt that guidance was needed on the role EIA played in shaping design before a project was granted consent. IEMA EIA Guide to Shaping Quality Development aims to promote the assessment as a design tool and establish the principles and framework for maximising the interaction between the environmental technical team and the master planning or architectural team. LDA Design worked with the Environment Agency and IEMA on the guide, which was launched at the institute’s EIA masterclass conference in November 2015. LDA is a design, environment and sustainability consultancy that works on development and infrastructure projects, and has a good understanding of how the environmental impact assessment and design processes interact.

The International Standards Organisation (ISO) and the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute (GHGMI) held a panel discussion on the sidelines of the UNFCCC talks in Paris. Tom Bauman, co-founder of the GHGMI and chair of a technical committee working on climate change mitigation and adaptation standards at the ISO, said that it had received a large number of requests over the past 18 months for new climate change standards.  Nick Blyth, policy and practice lead at IEMA, said that the demand for new standards was driven partly by a general increase in awareness of the impacts of climate change as well as the publication of the revised ISO 14001 environmental management standard. The revised 14001: 2015 standard requires organisations to consider the impact of the environment, including climate change, on their operations as well as their impact on the environment. “The revised ISO 14001 should introduce more people to climate change, which will then lead them into the...

The revised standard for environmental management systems, ISO 14001: 2015, was published on 15 September. The international standard was first published in 1996 and the latest version replaces the 2004 edition. About 300,000 organisations around the world are certified to 14001, including nearly 16,000 in the UK. ISO said the latest revisions aimed to ensure 14001 remained relevant and that the changes responded to the latest trends, such as an increasing recognition by companies of the need to factor in external and internal elements that influence their impact, including climate volatility.

More than three-quarters of the EU's important natural habitats are classified as "unfavourable", with many species threatened with extinction, according to the European commission. The findings came in the commission's mid-term review of the EU biodiversity strategy , which aims to halt biodiversity loss and the degradation of ecosystem services by 2020. Much more needs to be done on the ground to translate policy into action, the commission said. It wants biodiversity to be integrated into policies on agriculture, forestry, fisheries, regional development and trade.

Computers were meant to make our lives easier. We now have access to environmental surveys, energy use predictions, ESOS (energy savings opportunity scheme) audits, carbon reporting data, waste management records and demolition surveys on the computer rather than on paper. This should mean that we can reach the information we need at the click of a button. However, although the 30-year-old operations manual, safely stored in its ring binder, still exists in some organisations, it is often a struggle to find those electronic files that were emailed over the previous year. And, if another employee edits the Excel file in which you were compiling your energy stats, how can you be sure which version contains the most up-to-date information?

More than six million tonnes of electronic waste discarded in the EU did not end up in official collection and recycling systems, according to a two-year investigation coordinated by Interpol. Publishing its report today, the Countering WEEE Illegal Trade (CWIT) project found that 65% of the EU’s 6.15 million tonnes of e-waste was exported; recycled under non-compliant conditions in Europe (3.15 million tonnes); scavenged for valuable parts (750,000 tonnes); or was thrown in waste bins (750,000 tonnes).