In­tro­duc­ing EMAS-Eco-Man­age­ment and Au­dit Scheme-to Trinidad and To­ba­go. Ac­cord­ing to re­cent sta­tis­tics, Trinidad and To­ba­go is one of the most pol­lut­ed coun­tries in the world. A 2008 en­vi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance rank­ing from a Yale Uni­ver­si­ty study [1] put this coun­try at 89th out of 149 coun­tries with a score of 70.4 out of a pos­si­ble 100. (For some per­spec­tive, top per­former Switzer­land was at 95.5, while Niger scored the low­est with 39.1).

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, our car­bon diox­ide emis­sions place us in the top ten (No 6) of coun­tries in the world with the high­est car­bon foot­print per capi­ta (1980-2005)-beat­ing out even the Unit­ed States! It has been a long held be­lief that larg­er lo­cal com­pa­nies-par­tic­u­lar­ly those in the in­dus­tri­al and man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tors-bear the onus of en­vi­ron­men­tal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. But what of small­er en­ter­pris­es-the restau­rants, print­ers, and small­er man­u­fac­tur­ing and re­tail es­tab­lish­ments?

It is prob­a­bly safe to as­sume that many small and medi­um-sized com­pa­nies (SMEs), par­tic­u­lar­ly those out­side of the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor have lit­tle to no idea what im­pact their op­er­a­tions have on the en­vi­ron­ment and have more than like­ly not tak­en steps to man­age or im­prove their en­vi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance.

As busi­ness de­pends on ecosys­tem ser­vices, no­tably for re­source util­i­sa­tion in or­der to be com­pet­i­tive, ecosys­tems are be­ing im­pov­er­ished by un­sus­tain­able ac­tiv­i­ties and re­sources are there­fore be­ing con­sumed at a rate far ex­ceed­ing their nat­ur­al lev­els of re­plen­ish­ment.

The nat­ur­al cap­i­tal is be­ing ex­haust­ed and for this busi­ness must recog­nise that long-term sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment re­quires good en­vi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance. It has there­fore be­come im­per­a­tive that com­pa­nies wish­ing to re­main com­pet­i­tive and con­duct busi­ness in­ter­na­tion­al­ly have to show ev­i­dence of en­vi­ron­men­tal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly true of Eu­ro­pean coun­tries where lo­cal com­pa­nies may look to ob­tain busi­ness.

More and more Eu­ro­pean com­pa­nies wish­ing to do busi­ness with Trinidad and To­ba­go com­pa­nies are look­ing for ev­i­dence of en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Coun­tries reg­u­la­tions and en­vi­ron­men­tal stan­dards, such as ISO 14001-which is a uni­ver­sal­ly ac­cept­ed cer­ti­fi­ca­tion prov­ing that a com­pa­ny main­tains an en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment sys­tem-may be used.

How­ev­er, en­force­ment of reg­u­la­tions may be lax and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of stan­dards such as ISO 14001 are of­ten bur­den­some in terms of cost and re­sources and there­fore out of the reach of many small­er com­pa­nies En­ter EMAS-or more specif­i­cal­ly the Eco-Man­age­ment and Au­dit Scheme is the most ad­vanced en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment scheme present­ly avail­able.

Based on a vol­un­tary choice, com­pa­nies and oth­er pub­lic or­gan­i­sa­tions eval­u­ate, man­age and con­tin­u­ous­ly im­prove their en­vi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance. EMAS was first in­tro­duced in 1995 by the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion as part of the Eu­ro­pean Union's goal of sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment. It was de­vel­oped as a vol­un­tary scheme and while it was orig­i­nal­ly tar­get­ed to com­pa­nies in the in­dus­tri­al sec­tor, to­day it is open to com­pa­nies in all eco­nom­ic sec­tors.

EMAS is es­sen­tial­ly a tool-an EU stan­dard which al­lows com­pa­nies to eval­u­ate, re­port and im­prove their en­vi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance. To re­ceive EMAS cer­ti­fi­ca­tion an or­gan­i­sa­tion must com­ply with the fol­low­ing steps:

adopt an en­vi­ron­men­tal pol­i­cy con­tain­ing com­mit­ment both to com­ply with all rel­e­vant en­vi­ron­men­tal leg­is­la­tion and to achieve con­tin­u­ous im­prove­ments in en­vi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance;

con­duct an en­vi­ron­men­tal re­view, con­sid­er­ing all en­vi­ron­men­tal as­pects of the or­gan­i­sa­tion's ac­tiv­i­ties, prod­ucts and ser­vices, meth­ods to as­sess these, its le­gal and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work and ex­ist­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment prac­tices and pro­ce­dures; in the light of the re­sults of the re­view, es­tab­lish an ef­fec­tive en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment sys­tem aimed at achiev­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion's en­vi­ron­men­tal pol­i­cy de­fined by the top man­age­ment. The man­age­ment sys­tem needs to set re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, ob­jec­tives, means, op­er­a­tional pro­ce­dures, train­ing needs, mon­i­tor­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems; car­ry out an en­vi­ron­men­tal au­dit as­sess­ing in par­tic­u­lar the man­age­ment sys­tem in place and con­for­mi­ty with the or­gan­i­sa­tion's pol­i­cy and pro­gramme as well as com­pli­ance with rel­e­vant en­vi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments;

pro­vide a state­ment of its en­vi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance which lays down the re­sults achieved against the en­vi­ron­men­tal ob­jec­tives and the fu­ture steps to be un­der­tak­en in or­der to con­tin­u­ous­ly im­prove the or­gan­i­sa­tion's en­vi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance; and the en­vi­ron­men­tal re­view, EMS, au­dit pro­ce­dure and the en­vi­ron­men­tal state­ment must be ap­proved by an ac­cred­it­ed EMAS ver­i­fi­er, and the val­i­dat­ed state­ment needs to be sent to the EMAS Com­pe­tent Body for reg­is­tra­tion and made pub­licly avail­able be­fore an or­gan­i­sa­tion can use the EMAS lo­go."

To be con­tin­ued next week.