What are Your Business’ Environmental Obligations?
Your business’ obligations when it comes to environmental issues can differ quite significantly, depending on your business’ industry, product or service line, workforce and office environment. Generally speaking, every business has to comply with environmental legislation, which itself covers a wide range of issues and factors – including but not limited to the safe and correct management of waste, the correct and safe handling of hazardous and potentially toxic materials, and the management of your business’ emissions. Of course, your business does not have to stop at compliance with legislation; there is also an argument for your business’ moral obligation to uphold certain values with regard to the environment, whether global climate crisis or local ecological concerns.
Managing Emissions
Depending on your industry, you may have specific requirements with regard to emissions and their management; for example, manufacturers would require an environmental permit from the Environment Agency to operate, which itself imposes certain limits – including a requirement to follow specific management system processes to track and manage your emissions. In the case of particularly high-volume pollution, the Agency is permitted to suspend your operations or even directly intervene.
Managing your gas emissions can be an easy thing to address – and one especially simple way to fall well under the Environment Agency’s guidelines under its permit is to make use of industrial gas cleaning systems, lowering the amount of pollution released into the atmosphere from your manufacturing processes.
Waste Management
The management of your business’ waste encompasses a wide range of factors – from the safe storage of hazardous waste to compliance with environmental standards on the packaging of your business’ products. With regard to packaging, different standards exist for different intentions; your packaging can be designed for recovery (of energy or by composting), for recycling or for re-use. If your business operates above a revenue threshold of £2 million, and handles more than 50 tonnes of packaging each year, your business must sign up to a government compliance scheme, through which non-compliance can result in fines or even criminal charges.
Future-Proofing
Crucially, these environmental expectations do not exist in a vacuum; they are liable to change, as the science evolves and environmental crises deepen. As such, doing the minimum in order to meet current environmental obligations will only result in you taking remedial steps again, and again, as those obligations become stricter and stricter. As such, going above and beyond in addressing your obligations can not only save you valuable time and re-investment in greener solutions, but up your public profile as a company with green messaging.
