Environmental auditor qualifications: Meeting new,rigorous demands for quality audits

“Ah, Mr. Cahill, I wonder if you could come back to the auditor's team room. It seems one of your auditors has fallen asleep for the second time this week. I know you had a grueling trip getting here, but this is embarrassing to everyone”. So went an audit I led some time ago. It was not a fun experience, and it has left some scars. There has been much discussion lately in the profession about certifying environmental (health and safety) auditors against certain performance criteria. But how does one evaluate for such important measures as physical stamina?. This article discusses the qualifications that environmental auditors should have if they are to lead or conduct a quality audit. It becomes evident after reviewing these expectations that certifying auditors through a traditional written examination might ignore some of the most important skills an auditor should possess, especially in working with managers throughout an organization. Before certifying organizations progress too far down the restrictive written-exam road, they should determine how these other skills are to be assessed. No amount of book learning can overcome the drawbacks of a poor or combative interviewer or even an exhausted auditor.     

Maintaining your EMS: The stages of EMS development

Registering to ISO 14001 doesn't mean you're forever green. If you want an environmental management system (EMS) to keep moving your organization forward to improved environmental and business performance, you need to maintain and refine it. The first step toward doing so is understanding the stages that each EMS goes through on its way to full business integration. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Registrars,Accreditation, and ISO 14001

The International Standardization Organization (ISO) will be publishing the first international environmental management system standard: ISO 14001. The ultimate impact of this standard is subject to heated debate throughout the industrial and environmental communities. This article focuses on one aspect of the standard: the process of certification/registration. ISO 14001 is a voluntary initiative. Companies will need to decide for themselves whether or not to pursue certification. As indicated in Section 1 of ISO 14001, ?This International Standard is applicable to any organization that wishes to

• a) implement, maintain and improve an environmental management system;
• b) assure itself of its conformance with its stated environmental policy;
• c) demonstrate such conformance to others;
• d) seek certification/registration of its environmental management system by an external organization;
• e) make a self determination and declaration of conformance with the standard.”?

As the introduction to ISO 14001 makes clear, ?the specification contains only those requirements that may be objectively audited for certification/registration and/or self declaration purposes.”? Any additional ?guidance…will be contained in other international standards.”? To avoid confusion, these other international standards tend to be called ?guidelines”?. Of particular interest to those associated with the certification and registration of systems to ISO 14001 are the three guidelines for environmental auditing. Officially these are referred to as:

• ISO 14010 - Guidelines for Environmental Auditing - General Principles,
• ISO 14011 - Guidelines for Environmental Auditing - Audit Procedures - Auditing of Environmental Management Systems, and
• ISO 14012 - Guidelines for Environmental Auditing - Qualification Criteria for Environmental Auditors.

     

Hot air,fast bucks,or true commitment: Strategies for transforming environmental commitment into a competitive advantage

Just saying that you are doing something is not good enough, especially when it comes to the environment. You need to document your changes and progress. In this article, (reprinted, with permission, from The Environmental Marketing Imperative) we'll show you how you can establish a true and meaningful environmental commitment for your company. We'll also show you how to effectively use this commitment as the basis for strategic marketing and communications plans.     

The potential effect of ISO 14000 standards on environmental audit training in the United States

Training has been an important component of the environmental audit profession since its outset some 15–20 years ago. Training and education have taken on a variety of forms—from audit texts and articles, to formal courses, to videotapes, to on-the-job training programs. These efforts have helped to advance the sophistication of environmental auditing over the past few years. Now, with the advent of the international ISO 14012 Environmental Auditor Qualification Guidelines,¹ the auditing profession in the United States and around the world likely will be transformed in the near future. In fact, many organizations are now reengineering their programs in anticipation of the emerging Guidelines. The expected transformation holds for training and education programs as well. This article suggests some of the ways in which environmental audit training is likely to be reshaped as a result of ISO 14012. Offerors of training courses and seminars would be wise to anticipate the changes and modify their programs accordingly. A quick response could provide a competitive advantage. Moreover, corporate audit program managers should conduct critical evaluations of commercial offerings to assure that the programs' contents are consistent with ISO 14012 “auditor certification” expectations.     

Effective Communication in Environmental Management

Communication is the glue that holds together the elements of an environmental management system. This article offers some practical tips on how to ensure that your environmental communication system is doing the job you want it to. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Designing effective community relations programs

• Cleanup of a contaminated site is halted as community residents launch a legal challenge against the method that those responsible for the site have selected for remediation.
• Parents and teachers at a public school call for an investigation to determine if substances in the building are making students and staff sick. Midway into the investigation, they also become concerned as to whether the right tests are being performed to detect contamination that may be present, and how they will know what the test results mean.
• Industrial neighbors of a facility oppose its air permit application out of concern for the effects the facility's emissions might have on their own workers.

Virtually no business enterprise or government entity is immune from the potential for public interest in or concern about environmental issues. Within the public arena, environmental issues are rarely viewed only in terms of their scientific, technical, or regulatory merits. Instead, they are invariably intertwined with other issues and perceptions regarding health and safety, property values, social justice, and overall quality of life. As such, environmental issues have the potential to create significant controversy, concern, and opposition among community residents. Fortunately, in many cases, much, if not all, of the anger and fear that community residents feel can be relieved through a substantive dialogue that either corrects misinformation or provides a platform for discussing actions that could, should, or are taking place to remedy a situation. Promoting and sustaining such dialogues is the goal of community relations. This article covers the process of designing and implementing a community relations program plan to address serious or long-term environmental issues surrounding facilities, sites, or projects.     

Counteracting the focusing illusion: Effects of defocusing on car users’ predicted satisfaction with public transport

Car users underestimate their potential satisfaction with public transport due to a focusing illusion (i.e., focusing on a too narrow range of aspects related to the focal event). To investigate whether a defocusing technique would increase car users’ predicted satisfaction with public transport, the effects of defocusing techniques, generic (Study 1) and self-relevant (Study 2), were investigated. In Study 1 (estimate daily time spent on ten pre-selected activities), the generic defocusing technique did not generate higher predicted satisfaction with public transport. In Study 2, the self-relevant defocusing technique generated higher predicted satisfaction on quality attributes, namely satisfaction with the number of departures, the number of available seats and the condition of the vehicles, in comparison with controls. It is concluded that the self-relevant defocusing technique applied in Study 2 (state your various everyday activities and describe how much time you engage in them) was successful in making car users take into account activities in life that will remain unchanged if they were to use public transport for their daily travel. Additionally, in Studies 1 and 2, it was found that car-use habit, regardless of the experimental condition, influenced the magnitude of predicted satisfaction, that is, the higher the car-use habit, the lower the predicted satisfaction with public transport.     

Project XL: cheaper,cleaner, and smarter ways to protect the environment

Are you interested in making the job of complying with federal environmental requirements cheaper and smarter for your business? The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is committed to helping business and other sectors make more sense of environmental requirements through a number of innovative programs, one of the most far‐reaching being Project XL. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Maintaining your EMS: Six critical control points

If you want your environmental management system (EMS) to mature and continue providing value over the long term, it is important to build in mechanisms that encourage continued growth while warding off complacency and loss of interest. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Questions and Answers. The right time for TQM?

In this quarterly column, I will be inviting you—the TQEM reader—to ask our distinguished board of advisors and contributors questions of current interest pertaining to TQM and environmental management. As editor, I will then share the questions with the board at large and compile the answers here. For this issue, the editorial staff has chosen three basic questions (and even helped out with an answer or two). Please take a moment to write down what you think will be an interesting question, or set of questions, and address it to me: TQEM Questions & Answers Editor, 22 West 21st Street, New York, NY 10010. I will credit you with the question and send out an extra copy of TQEM.     

Voluntary or mandatory environmental auditing in the european community: The carrot or the stick?

One possible route to responsible environmental management now under active discussion in the European Community (EC) is a European-wide environmental auditing program. The issue currently being debated by the EC's policy body is what form the program should take—mandatory or voluntary. Whatever the final form of the regulation, environmental management is about to gain added significance in boardrooms throughout Europe and the environmental auditing industry is about to experience a dramatic period of growth in the EC.     

Australian Local Government Attempts to Deliver Beneficial Environmental Outcomes

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a national project investigating Australian local government (LG) attempts to deliver beneficial environmental outcomes. It briefly describes the extensive environmental planning, management and protection roles played by Australian LGs. It notes that these roles are poorly documented within the academic literature, and makes a case for fundamental research to better understand LGs and their work from the inside. It describes this project's use of grounded theory methods in gathering and analysing 34 case studies of Australian LG environmental initiatives. The inside perspectives represented by the papers show that Australian LG environmental work:

• extends beyond its statutory requirements;

• is novel and creative;

• endures by balancing ecological, social and economic values;

• demonstrates different patterns depending on its planning, management or protection focus; and

• usually involves environmental strategists with long-term, passionate commitments to local environmental values.

     

瑞典畜禽养殖许可制度研究及其启示

我国畜禽养殖行业中的规模化养殖单位,养殖畜禽品类繁多且污染产生量巨大,而现行的排污许可证申请制度却无法起到畜禽养殖污染防治的效果。为制定更加具体的最佳可行技术标准,完善畜禽养殖行业排污许可证的申请与核发程序,故而通过域外比较瑞典相关立法规定提供参考。瑞典自其环境保护事业开展半个世纪以来,已经形成了由畜禽养殖许可证申请人提交环境影响报告,郡行政议事会同时参考畜禽养殖业最佳可行技术标准,审核资质并发放许可证的畜禽养殖许可制度体系。借鉴瑞典的立法经验,我国畜禽养殖业污染防治应以预防为主,并快相关专项立法的制定进程,以建立畜禽养殖行业排污许可综合管理制度。     

Questions and Answers. From waste to improved production?

Please send me your comments and questions on TQEM. Address it to me: TQEM Questions & Answers Editor, 22 West 21st Street, New York, NY 10010. I will credit you with the question and send out an extra copy of TQEM. My thanks to James, Jack, and Sheila for sharing in the quality revolution this issue.     

清洁生产方案实施状况分析

清洁生产审核的目的是找出企业不符合清洁生产之处,进而提出方案并解决问题。目前在石油行业清洁生产方案难以实施的原因是:对其认识不足,组织管理和实施政策不到位,审核人员业务素质不高。解决该问题的措施是:加强培训,提高审核人员素质,调整并制定有关政策。我国必须加大力度开展清洁生产审核,以推动企业的清洁生产工作。     

MANY RESOURCES,MANY USES: A SYSTEM ANALYSIS APPROACH TO RENEWABLE RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT1

ABSTRACT: Decisionmaking associated with the Nation's 1.7 billion acres of forest and range land has become increasingly complicated because of the rise in competition for resource use and in the awareness of environmental and social effects. This system analysis approach uses four models to synthesize pertinent masses of information into measures of economic, environmental, and social impacts. The system results can be used to help evaluate alternative national programs. The models are:

相似文献   

The carbon neutral free for all

Businesses offering to make you or your company carbon neutral are proliferating on the Internet. The term carbon neutral is being defined by common usage. There are no standard ways of measuring your carbon emissions and so no standards for becoming carbon neutral. This paper examines eleven websites offering carbon neutrality. It compares online calculators, their results and the costs of offsetting calculated on the strength of those results. It traces two offset projects: one in Kenya, offering voluntary offsets and run by a not-for-profit organisation; one in India striving for UN Clean Development Mechanism status. The projects are traced from the online carbon offset retailer to the actual project on the ground in order to compare the online rhetoric with the time consuming and difficult work of developing community based projects in Third World countries. The paper offers a definition of carbon neutral based on the ways in which the term is being used. It also uncovers a range of issues for further discussion.     

我国环境审计面临的问题及解决对策

环境审计是规范企业环境行为、提高企业环境意识的重要手段。由于我国环境审计刚刚起步,在审计理论与实践中还存在参与主体不够全面,缺少法规、制度的支持,审计范围狭窄等不足之处。从环境审计的基本问题入手,通过分析和总结我国环境审计存在的问题,提出扩大环境审计主体、完善环境保护法规体系、拓宽环境审计的范围、建立环境审计后续跟踪制度等适合中国国情的环境审计策略。     

Advocates for environmental justice: the role of the champion in public participation implementation

That segment of the community I would say is just in general pretty disenfranchised. We found that if you want participation you have to go to them. I mean there are days when you just need to go knock on the door.

Brownfields developer in a poor urban neighbourhood

This article considers the role that champions play as advocates for socioeconomically disadvantaged community member involvement in environmental management decision-making. Six case studies of brownfields redevelopment projects located in poor urban neighbourhoods are examined. Analysis of these case studies reveals how champion behaviour, which has typically been studied only in the context of technological innovation, is enacted in public participation efforts in the service of environmental justice. The study finds that champions who emerge in these settings lead the development and implementation of non-standard public participation process innovations.