 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
ENVIRONMENTAL ASPECTS
The page provides a brief discussion around the identification of environmental aspects. The identification of environmental aspects follows the identification of environmental risk sources and their emissions and discharges and should provide a comprehensive list (or register) of all potential environmental impacts from which to select aspects that need to be managed. This is a crucial step in the environmental management process.
The international environmental management standard ISO-14001 provides a definition of environmental aspect, but which is not very clear: i.e.: “Element of an organization’s activities, products or services that can interact with the environment”. It is not very clear because an element of an organization’s activities could be anything from a specific activity, the use of a chemical, a piece of equipment, an environmental objective, an operational practice, a plant component, an environmental impact, a specific process, an emission or discharge, a non-routine event, etc.
I have seen quite a few aspect registers. Some of these only list emissions and discharges, while others list interactions between risk sources and environmental sensitivities, but most have a mixture of the possible interpretations of ‘element’. It also proves a challenge to limit the number of environmental aspects. Especially when listing interactions between environmental sensitivities and emissions and discharges, the number of environmental aspects can easily become unmanageable. As a consequence, environmental impact registers tend to suffer in transparency and succinctness.
I believe that the ISO-14001 definition of environmental aspect is deliberately vague; in recognition of the fact that environmental management is so subjective. I also suggest embracing this subjectivity rather than fighting it, and to consider the expectations of stakeholders at this stage of the process as suggested in the following Figure.
An example result of this approach can be found here. Typical offshore oil and gas emissions and discharges and environmental sensitivities are listed here and here.
EMS 1 2 3 4 5 6
