Environmental Management Systems Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Environmental Management Systems - Essay Example To understand its ramifications a company has to systematically consider all the factors driving the complex relationships between its business model and the environment and how it affects the company's competitiveness and the balance sheet. Effective environmental policies and programmes need to be worked out and put in place. Environment Management System (EMS) is an operational tool for managing these impacts on an organisation's activities on the environment (Australia 2007)1. It provides a platform for a structured approach to planning and implementing environment protection measures. An EMS integrates environmental management into the company's daily operations, long-term planning, quality control systems and finally end up in the Annual Report. Today computers have pervaded and revolutionised all sorts of office work. Paper and white-collar offices are becoming things of the past and have been replaced with network infrastructures and functionality has shifted to the Internet, automation and e-business solutions. Computers bring efficiency and allow reduction in staff and office space at the same time copiously enhances volumetric capacity of data storage and simplifies retrieval of information. Clearly, this transformation has environmental and social benefits such as reduced consumption of paper has revitalized forest resources. Video conferencing has reduced travel, saving both money and time. All such repositioning forms part of EMS. An effective EMS can assist an organisation to: Minimise environmental liabilities and demonstrate good corporate practices and ethics. Maximize efficiency in utilising resources and reduce waste. Inculcate environmental concern among its employees to gain a better understanding of the environmental impacts of the work they are involved in. Stay on course with efficient operations to achieve corporate motive of increasing profits without compromising environmental concerns. Organisations can use EMS to ensure that their performance is within regulatory requirements, and prepare ahead of more stringent regulations that might be necessitated in the future. Case Studies It will be appropriate to study implementation of some successful EMS by big and small organisations. In some case studies analysed below we find how some corporate giants and local government bodies have effectively introduced EMS standards and are successfully evolving them. We also see how brutalities on nature by some big players are brought to justice through community movements and without management commitment EMS is not always a win-win situation. Konica Minolta Model Konica Minolta, the Japanese multinational giant involved in imaging and office solutions business, is successfully implementing environment friendly policies in their large network of establishments around the world (Report, 2005 p.18) 2. Some of the measures they have beneficially introduced are: By minimising product size and weight the company not only conserved in-put resources but also scaled down requirement of transport. They further improved upon it with design cameras and digital multi functional devices and came out with new greener models