Environmental issues and the consequences of failure to manage them feature heavily in the news today. Put these into a context to commerce and industry and the list seems endless, for instance:-

• Legal compliance issues

• Waste disposal and pollution

• Energy consumption

• Climate Change

• Sustainability

• Reporting obligations

• Corporate Social Responsibility

• Employee satisfaction

to name but a few! Together they add up to risks for business in three crucial areas:-

• Legislation and compliance, there is a large and expanding range of environmental legislation aimed at preventing pollution and reducing waste, it applies to everyone and ignorance is no defence. In many cases individual directors are personally responsible for their company’s performance, so you need to be aware of everything that might affect you.
• Financial pressure, costs are rising over and above inflation. To reduce waste and encourage resource efficiency landfill tax is now rising at £8/ton/yr, by 2010 every ton of land-filled waste will cost £48 in tax alone, more than double today’s rate. Energy costs also continue to soar.
• Reputation, today’s consumers want to deal with companies they perceive as being environmentally and ethically responsible and good staff want to work for good companies. Supply chain initiatives mean this type of pressure is being applied to businesses many stages removed from public consumption and business that are slow to react will start to lose sales.

Currently many companies and organisations are doing great things in specific areas like waste, energy consumption and site management. Those that coordinate their efforts through an environmental management system get the most benefit. Simply put an EMS Brings together all the individual initiatives on policy, waste energy etc. in a structured, documented and provable approach to managing environmental performance and responsibilities. The immediate benefits are:-

• Legislative compliance

• Cost reductions and efficiency improvements

• Enhanced reputation with customers, staff, suppliers, insurers, banks

• Increased sales potential and protection of existing business

• Greater competitive advantage

• Increased employee motivation

In recognition of the rapidly changing nature of environmental management in business we at Urban Mines can work with you to design and implementation EMSs to ISO14001 or BS8555 standards. By taking a holistic approach and working in detail with clients we are helping a number of companies by bringing together the good work they are doing to yield triple bottom line benefits of Economic, Social and Environmental improvements.