ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION

Environmental Management

As the main user of the natural resources, the human being is responsible for ensuring that its environmental impacts are mitigated or eliminated rather than catastrophic. More and more, consumers and opinion makers increase their pressure on companies and institutions, demanding appropriate environmental practices. The environmental management aims at the sustainable use and the natural resources conservation, habitats protection and the control of hazards presented by human activity.

Pollution is nothing else rather than the result from wasted resources, i.e. wasted products. Although this has been traditionally accepted as a byproduct of any commercial, industrial or domestic operation, those wastes are nowadays recognized as a result of the economic inefficiency. Environmental protection usually involves the search for a solution to such inefficiencies. Incorporating environmental responsibility in our current practices, one can protect the environment for next generations while at the same time reducing the companies costs. Environmental management should be part of the day-to-day activities and everyone’s responsibility in the same way as safety and other legal requirements.

Environmental pollution problems, particularly air pollution in industrial areas and water resources contamination, occurred initially on developed countries (United States, Japan, Germany, England, etc.) in the middle 1960s and early 1970s. The concern with environmental management is linked to specific regional aspects, associated with: development pattern, industry sectors, energy matrix, fuels that are used and natural resources availability. The globalization of these questions has been caused important economic consequences. However, the corporate behavior of the highest environmental impact industrial sectors, such as petrochemical, chemical, pulp and paper, steel and mining, varies from company to company.

The way to the future is the environmental ethical behavior. By this mean, compliance is achieved by the Environmental Management System implementation. The company becomes stable and sustainable, committed to an environment policy, expressed by plans and specific policies. The environmental issue stops being an exclusive production duty and becomes an administration duty, part of the strategic planning, development of routine activities, discussions about alternative scenarios and, consequently, generating policies, targets and action plans. Environmental management is not only applicable to the industrial sector, but to all sectors, organizations and communities, enabling them to comply with their environmental obligations and reduce the environmental impact of their operations. States, municipalities and districts supervise separately many installations and operations. An environmental management system may be used as an integration framework and help these different operations to improve their performance by means of more preventive approaches.

Most of the Brazilian companies still limits its environmental responsibility to the legal requirements to control the water, air and soil pollution through the environmental licensing system. In case of new ventures or plants, the companies have also to cope with the requirements contained in the Environmental Impact Assessment Resolution Nº 001/1986 (CONAMA).

In recent years, environmental management has become one of the most important activities related to any industrial operation. In general, one can conceptualize industrial environmental management as organizational systems and programs integration in order to allow for:

a- Control and reduction of environmental impacts due to operations and products;
b- Compliance with environmental laws and other regulations;
c- Development and use of adequate technologies to minimize or eliminate industrial wastes;
d- Monitoring and evaluation of environmental processes and parameters;
e- Eliminate or reduce risks to man and environment;
f- Use of clean technologies aiming to minimize wasted energy and materials;
g- Improve the relationship with the community and the government;
h- Foresee environmental issues that can threaten the environment and the human health.

The ISO 14000 series is a group of norms that provides tools and establishes a standard for the Environmental Management System. These standards cover six well-defined areas: Environmental Management System, Environmental Audits, Environmental Performance Assessment, Environmental Labelling, Environmental Aspects in Product Standards and Product Life Cycle Analysis.