ISO 14031 Evaluation of the Environmental Performance of the Management System and its Relationship to the Environment
What is lt?
The EMS standard requires organizations to develop measurable objectives and targets, and to monitor and evaluate their performance against them. The EMS does not audit this performance but it does audit the management of performance objectives and target. SC4 is developirig a guideline to help organizations manage tliis monitoring and evaluation process.
The basic premise is that what gets measured gets done. Measurement allows an organization to more clearly understand and quantify where it is and how far it has to go to meet its objectives and targets. lt also provides a basis for understanding improvement. The EPE then will provide the organization with a systematic tool for generating information. A necessary element of generating useful information is selecting or defining the environmental performance indicators (EPIS) or performance measures that will be used.
EPE is different from environmental audits in several significant ways. EPE is an ongoing process. As part of the management system it is something that is put in place and available at all times. It helps to define actions, responsibilities and information flows that are part of ongoing, day-to-day operations, An environmental audit ls a snapshot In time. It is a periodic verification that everything is as it should be. As well, while the evidence collected during an audit is existing evidence, the information generated by an EPE is new evidence. While within the framework of and EPE an organization can conduct research and investigate new issues, within an audit one can only assess claims concerning the current state.
Since an EPE system provides the framework for information gathering it also provides a logical link to reporting. Organizations will have many internal and external reporting requirements and EPE system can ensure that the information is gathered and disseminated correctly and on time. Many organizations also choose to voluntarily report on their environmerital management system or environmental performance. The systematic collection and generation of information provided by the EPE system provides tremendous efficiencies of effort should an organization decide to report voluntarily.
How It Works
The standard being developed by SC4 will allow organizations to develop appropriate systems to measure, evaluate, describe and communicate environmental performance. lt is part of the environmental management system and not separate from it. Thus ISO 14001, the EMS specification document, requires that an organization monitor and measure on a regular basis the key characteristics of its operations and activities. The developers of this standard, however, intend to develop a document that will be useful to an organization that wishes to evaluate its environmental performance whether or not it has a formal environmental management system in place. If an organization without and EMS wishes to use the EPE system it must still have a mechanism for developing objectives and targets since the EMS document and not the EPE document provides this guidance.
The current draft of the EPE document contains the following elements:
Planning EPE
Management corisiderations
Selecting indicators for the management area
Selecting indicators for the operational area
Selecting iridicators for the environmental area
Evaluating Environmental Performance
Collecting data
Analyzing data
Evaluating information
Internal reporting and communicating
External reporting and communicating
Reviewing and improving EPE
Planning involves reviewing or identifying those environmental aspects of an organizations activities products and services that have generated objectives and targets. It is essential that the EPE process be integrated with the EMS since the development of objectives and targets should include identifying what an organization wants to measure and therefore how it wants to measure it.
The selection or definition of environmental performance indicators is key at this juncture. There is much debate about the development or EPIS. Should there be generic EPIs across sectors? Common EPIs would provide the basis for comparison and benchmarking. They might also provide the basis for generation of national, regional or international environmental accounts. But is the development of such generic EPIs possible given the diversity of business operations, local conditions and measurement capabilities? Should individual sectors develop their own EPIS? If generic. EPIs are too difficult to develop should sector-based EPIs he developed?
In 1992, SC4 set itself the goal of developing generic and sector specific EPIs but soon abandoned it as too large a project. They also had to ask themselves if they were the right group to develop sectoral EPIS. Perhaps ttie industry associations, which are able to bring together all of the experts in their area, should be encouraged to undertake this task. Sector efforts to date to do this have proven difficult. Organizations are wary of helping to create indicators tliat will allow them to be too easily ranked for environmental performance against their competitors.
Instead of developing actual indicators SC4 has set itself the objective of developing an analytical tool for the development of indicators. This tool begins by classifying the areas for environmental performance evaluation. The first evaluation area is the management system itself, the second is the operational systems: and the third is the state of the environment. Each area will consider, inputs, processes and outputs and can be subdivided into a series of sub- categories. In the management systems area for example there might be a series of subdivisions that match the elements in ttie EMS standard.
The recognition that these three areas are linked rather than discrete is also important. When looking at the inputs and outputs from an operational system there will inevitably be a consideration of the state of the environment. The same holds true for management systems. Decisions based on EMS policies must be viewed in the context of their relationship to the state of the environment.
The tool for defining or select.ing EPIs includes a way to classify them, ways to
validate them,
ways to validate them, and criteria for selection.
Classifications include:
Absolute: basic data without
interpretation
Relative: compares the data from one
parameter against another
Index:: a consolidation
of data placed on a constructed scale, usually 1 to 100
Aggregated: a collection of data from related factors or of the same
factor from different sites;
aggregates often highlight accumulative concerns not evident from single datum.
Weighed: placing a value judgment on different
data for comparative or cumulative
purposes
Validation criteria include:
Scientifically valid: technically
sound, varifiable and reproducible
Representative:
representing a general condition or issue
Responsive to change: capable of indicating trends within an acceptable time frame
Predictive:
capable
of indicating future trends
Targeted:
capable of being compared to a target for comparative purposes
Cost effective:
the cost of
obtaining the data must not exceed their value
Adequacy/availability: must serve the purpose and be re liably
available
Relevant:
must serve the organization's
Understandable: clear and
understandable to non specialists
Selection criteria include:
· Indicators should be simple and understandable
· There should be a minimum number of indicators to provide the necessary information
. Indicators should be quantitative wherever possible and justifiably qualitative where not
. Indicators should be related to financial measures
Defining the scope of an EPE process is not dissimilar from the scoping exercise involved in life cycle assessment. An organization must define the boundaries of what it will measure. How far outside lts own fences will it attempt to assess and measure the impact or potential impact of its activities? lt may decide to limit the scope to measuring only those activities within its fences over which it has control.
The application of the EPE process (draws largely on good quality management practices. The process should allow for the collection, filing or data entry, storage, maintenance, retrieval and disposition of information. As well there must be appropriate procedures In place to ensure data quality. The sampling protocols, test methodologies and modeling techniques must. be valid and accepted; the test equipment must be calibrated and the data and processes must be periodically verified. With good data the organization is in a position to analyze and evaluate its performance. Any evaluation should of course always look for root cause and not simply respond with corrective measures. The philosophy should be that of taking preventive action rather than responding to crisis.
The information generated by the EPE process will be used for internal purposes to ensure that the organization remains in compliance with its legal requirements as well as with it own policies objectives and targets. It. will also be used in the review process to provide the basis for recommendations for improvement and change. As mentioned earlier, it also provides the information and framework necessary for mandatory as well as voluntary external reporting.
What Can it Do?
Provide credible information: Using a rigorous quality assurance approach to information gathering, maintenance and dissemination the EPE process can assure the information generated is right information and that it is credible.
Provide a systematic approach: An EPE can help organizations avoid redundant data and departmental overlap in operations by promoting iritegrated, company-wide information systems capable of gathering salient details for both compliance and strategic management purposes.
Enable benchmarking: Good environmental performance information is repeatable and comparable. lt provides the basis for benchmarking analyses and for understanding trends. An organization may wish to do this internally over time or it may wish to work within its sector to benchmark itself against its competitors. EPE thus enables competitive analysis.
Help identify problems: If you cant see lt, lf you don't know about it,, you don't see it as a problem. But it may still represent a risk or liability. A systematic approach to generating and reporting environmental performance information will help to ideritify problems early on when they are still manageable.
Facilitate Improvenent: Good performance information provides an understanding of where improvemet is possible, the parameters within which it can take place and the means for assessing its achievement.
Identify savings: Good information allows for the identification of waste and process inefficiencies. Reducing or eliminating these produces costs savings. The information generated by the EPE identifies savings opportunities.
Facilitate Reporting: One of the major obstacles confronted by organizations that consider voluntary external reporting is the lack of good information. With a good information system in place reporting becomes feasible and cost effective.
What it Cannot Do
Does not provide common performance standards: The ISO EPE process standard is a systems standard in support of the EMS standard. It does not provide common performance standards. The scope or TC 207 prohibits it from developing limit values or performance levels.
Does not provide a common set of indicators: The standard provides a rigorous methodology for the definition and selection of indicators rather than the indicators themselves. Common indicators may envolve over time. The EPE guidance is designed to catalyze this process.
Will not solve environmental problems: The EPE standard is about the credible generation of information. This information can contribute significantly to solving environmental problems but in and of itself, it is not the solution.
Does not provide a greater level of certainty: The EPE process will provide more credible and consistent information about environmental performance, but it will not provide a greater level of scientific certainty about environmental impact. What it should do is clearly identify where uncertainty exists and the basis for this uncertainty.
Date upgrated Sep/02/98
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