Planning - Aspects, Impacts, Objectives and Targets
Activities, Aspects, and Impacts
Every organization engages in activities which produce various products or services, and those activities may somehow interact with the physical environment.
A company's activities may include certain aspects that affect or impact the environment in a positive, neutral or negative way. The aspects of business activities may impact the environment locally, regionally, or even globally. Let's look at one activity to see how these three concepts interact:
- Air Emissions is produced
- Use of Oil is required
- Possible oil spills
- Use of absorbents to clean up spills, etc
- Used oil must be recycled
- Degraded air quality
- Consumption of natural resources
- Increased landfill space
- Degraded water quality
Within the EMS, environmental aspects and impacts should be analyzed for the risks and opportunities they present. In this course, we will focus on designing an EMS that helps employers reduce risks and take advantage of opportunities that benefit the company and the environment.
It's also important to identify those aspects of an activity that most significantly affect the environment, and address them first. So, let's continue to take a closer look the concepts of aspects and impacts in more detail.
Knowledge Check Choose the best answer for the question.
3-1. The effects of company's activities on the environment are called environmental _____.
You forgot to answer the question!