Environmental Management System - What Is EMAS?

What Is EMAS?

The Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) is the EU’s voluntary environmental management instrument. The scheme has been available for participation by companies since 1995 and was originally restricted to companies in industrial sectors.Since 2001 EMAS has been open to all economic sectors including public and private services and since 2010 EMAS certification is also possible for organisations and sites located outside the EU Community, under the title of EMAS Global. Currently, more than 4,500 organisations and approximately 7,800 sites are EMAS registered.

The ISO 14001: 2004 requirements are a part of EMAS, but EMAS adds several elements to these:

• stricter requirements on the measurement and evaluation of environmental performance against set targets according to six environmental core indicators. This creates multi-annual comparability within and between organisations;
• compliance with environmental legislation ensured by government supervision: the compliance check is executed by an independent and external environmental verifier, who is in turn subjected to quality checks by national government authorities (EMAS Competent Bodies);
• requirement of employee involvement;
• provision of information to the general public through the obligation to publish an annual public environmental statement that is independently verified;
• registration by a public authority after verification by an accredited/licensed environmental verifier; and
• registered organisations can use the EMAS logo to communicate their EMAS compliance

EMAS provides registered organisations with the following six performance indicators: Energy efficiency, Material efficiency, Water, Waste, Biodiversity, Emissions. In its environmental statement, the organisation sets into relation input and output for each indicator; i.e. energy consumption per product produced. The indicators make a statement about an organisation’s process efficiency and effectiveness. They are indicators of inputs and outputs that can identify savings and contribute to an organisation’s cost reduction, in particular through increased resource efficiency. Surveys show that EMAS registrations can result in significant reductions in material and energy consumption – particularly in resource-intensive sectors. The generated cost reductions then outweigh the implementation costs of EMAS.

EMAS also has specific provisions in place to facilitate EMAS-registration for small and medium sized organisations. EMASeasy, a lean and standardized methodology, has been developed with small and micro businesses in mind, and registration cycles can be extended by a year, thereby easing administrative and financial burdens on these organisations.