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Prioritering af miljøindsatsen
English Summary
Tool box coupling environmental knowledge and management decisions
The toolbox has been developped for companies who wish to make and to document a prioritization of their environmental effort as part of the determination of targets and action plans for a continuous improvement of the environmental performance.
The present environmental situation of the company, the level of ambition of the management as well as the available resources are always decisive for the prioritization. Consequently, the tools focus on the possibilities for the company to systematically evaluate the importance of each individual environmental impact as well as to prioritize its environmental effort and render visible the reasons for the choises made by the management.
Thus, the tools support the company in elaborating a basis for decisions intended for the prioritization by the management of the environmental effort.
Basis and purpose
Focus on the most important environmental aspects
For still more companies it is no longer satisfactory to meet the environmental requirements set by the authorities. The companies themselves want to take responsibility for reducing their environmental impact from production and products, for instance by introducing cleaner technology and environmental management. Therefore they want their considerations to become part of the business and market foundation.
The companies wishing to be certified according to an environmental management standard must indicate which environmental impacts they find significant and determine their environmental targets and programmes to reduce such impacts. The certification bodies have stressed that precisely this issue is difficult to deal with for many companies because they do not have the necessary knowledge to estimate what is important.
This situation has created a need for a clear and systematic method to partly estimate the importance of the environmental impacts and to partly prioritize the environmental effort allowing the company to obtain a basic knowledge and at the same time to render visible the reasons for the choises made by the management. These also comprise decisions of including other considerations in the prioritization such as wishes from employees, requirements from customers and considerations for neighbours.
The study
Co-operation between environmental institutes and companies
The tool box has been developed by VKI, Danish Toxicological Centre, Danish Technological Institute's Dept. of Environment and dk-TEKNIK ENERGI & MILJØ. To ensure that the tools can be used by companies without any specialised knowledge of the environmental field a number of companies have participated in the development and testing of the tool box:
 | Dandy A/S, Vejle |
| Midtjysk Betonvare- og Elementfabrik, Herning |
| Munkebjerg Hotel, Vejle |
| Repsol Brønderslev A/S |
| Schurpack Denmark a/s |
The development of the tool box has been grant-aided by the Danish EPA, The Council for Recycling and Cleaner Technology as well as by the basic grants from the Danish Agency for Development of Trade and Industry intended for the collaboration of the Approved Technological Service Institutes concerning environmental management and life cycle assessments.
Main conclusions
Flexibility of the prioritization
The tool box offers a great flexibility in the work of prioritization because each tool may be used separately allowing the companies to chose which areas they wish to focus on during the environmental work with due regard to the resources.
Testing of the tools by the participating companies has shown a great scope in the application of the tool box by the different companies. The benefit of the companies included:
| a more targeted environmental effort |
| an introduction to the management’s annual review of the environmental performance in connection with the environmental management system |
| selection of areas to be focused on during the environmental work and prioritization of resources |
| a visibility of the reasons for the prioritization of the environmental work |
| an analysis of the expectations of the surroundings as to the environmental effort |
Results of the project
The 9 tools of the tool box
The tool box includes the following 9 tools:
| Raw materials and ancillaries |
| Energy |
| Water |
| Emissions to the air |
| Waste water |
| Noice and vibrations |
| Risk of accidents, abnormal operation and previous pollution |
| Waste |
| Chemical working environment |
Each of the 9 tools supports the company partly in making an environmentally oriented evaluation of the environmental problem in question, partly in prioritizing the environmental effort based on environmentally oriented reasons as well as strategic and commercial considerations.
Each tool can be applied separately depending on the present environmental situation of the company. However, it is recommended that the company starts by applying the tool for evaluation and prioritizing of raw materials and ancillaries which will allow the company to estimate which of the applied raw materials and ancillaries contain substances that may turn out to be problematic to the environment or to the health and safety.
The appendices to the tool box include a list of substances that are presently regulated by the authorities. The list of substances may be used to identify the substances which need the company’s particular attention during the application of the tools for assessment of waste water, emissions to the air, waste and chemical health and safety aspects.
It is important that the prioritization reflects the attitude and the level of ambitions of the management as to the environmental work as it is expressed in the environmental policy of the company. Likewise it is important that the prioritization corresponds to the allocated resources. The management may find help in the introduction of the tool box to clarify and determine the level of ambition as well as the general weighting of the criteria of prioritization.
If the management wants to consider requirements or wishes from external partners and/or proposals from employees concerning the prioritization of the effort, it might find help in the appendices to the tool box offering support to the collection of necessary information to evaluate these aspects.
For each tool the prioritization is made on the basis of the following criteria of prioritization:
Necessary data/knowledge
| Lack of knowledge must not stop or delay the work of prioritization. Instead, the tools recommend that the company determines its targets for procuring the missing data/knowledge and continues the work of prioritization. The appendices to each tool include recommendations of procuring the necessary knowledge or recommendations of how to find help. |
Regulatory aspects
| The prioritization of the environmental effort must be based on the assumption that the company complies with the legal environmental requirements applying to the company. As for the environmental impacts covered by legal requirements and guidelines, the tools include an assessment of the company’s compliance with conditions, injunctions and prohibitions issued by the supervising authority as well as with the guiding environmental legislation such as the limit values fixed by the Danish EPA. |
Key figures
| Key figures concerning the environmental impact in relation to the size of the production are often used as a supplement to the requirements of the authorities. Partly because requirements of the authorities are often formulated as requirements to the concentration load which makes it difficult to estimate whether the load is heavy or small in relation to the production. Partly because key figures may be used to optimize parameters below the guiding limit values fixed by the authorities or parameters which are not usually comprised by the requirements of the authorities, for example the consumption of resources. The tools allow to evaluate the performance of the company in relation to the key figures for the development of the company itself during a number of years as well as to the average trade figures, if any. |
Possibilities of cleaner technology initiatives
| The tools allow the consideration of existing possibilities of cleaner technology initiatives during the prioritization. The initiatives include good housekeeping as well as more extensive initiatives. Each tool contains a review of good housekeeping that may be implemented immediately without any particular economic costs or organisational changes, for instance operational optimizations, reorganization of procedures or unproblematic substitution of substances. Since further initiatives demand more extensive and expensive changes, typically in the shape of new processes, raw materials or a new design of products, the tools recommend that the company aims at making a technical, an economic and an environmental evaluation of the possibilities of implementing further cleaner technology inititiatives in the company. |
Product related effort
| The tools allow product related knowledge to be taken into consideration during the prioritization. The criteria for obtaining the nordic eco-label (the swan) and the EU eco-label (the flower) may be seen as a standard for what is to be considered a high level of environmental performance. If eco-label criteria have been set up for the products of the company, the tools therefore recommend these criteria to be considered during the prioritization. Likewise, a life cycle assessment (LCA) may reveal potentials for improvement in the production phase as well as in the other life cycle phases. If there exists an LCA determining the most important areas of performance during the production of the company, this might also be considered in the prioritization. |
The assessment and the prioritization are carried out through comparisons by the company of its own measurement results, key figures, status of the preventive effort, etc. to legal requirements, trade average figures, possibilities of good housekeeping and cleaner technology, etc. The tools offer proposals for prioritizing of the effort but the final choise of areas of environmental effort is a management decision. More specifically the management must determine the reciprocal importance of the different prioritizing criteria since several criteria may apply to a given area of effort. Consequently, the result of each tool is a review of the areas of interest and their prioritization.
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