EMAS STATEMENTS An EMAS (Environmental Management and Audit Scheme) statement is a publicly available account of the environmental performance of a company or business. The accuracy of an EMAS statement has to be verified by an independent body before it can be published and in terms of winning public confidence, this is a definite advantage. Although EMAS statements are prepared in response to public demand for reliable information they attract little, if any, public response. There are a number of possible explanations for this. First of all, the public does not have to respond, even if this would be desirable. Secondly, the public may not be as concerned or interested as they make out to be. Finally, EMAS statements might not provide the answers the public are looking for. One way of ensuring the effectiveness of EMAS statements while at the same time making their preparation more rewarding, is to direct them at an internal audience in addition to the external one. I also suggest to follow the method of risk communication described on this site and to present the information about emissions and discharges within their business and societal contexts. Following the suggested method of risk communication will ensure that the statements remain focussed and succinct and presenting the environmental information in its context will ensure that the statements are meaningful and positive. An example of this approach is presented below. The figure shows a complete EMAS statement for an offshore oil production platform. Despite its 12 page size, it contains full details of 5 years of operational information. A legible table of contents of this example is provided after the figure. After reading this statement, people familiar with the operations of the platform commented that the statement, like nothing before, had helped them understand the environmental management of the platform. The following table shows the table of content for the above EMAS statement. Purpose and scope Context Oil field and oil platform Secondary impacts Process description Oil production Drilling Environmental management by design Platform modifications Continuous improvement Setting priorities Environmental management system Management of issues Atmospheric pollution Water and sediment pollution Oil spill risk Waste disposal Data table References Further information Validation Statement Tell us what you think A PDF version of the above EMAS statement can be found here.

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