ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIT

BACKGROUND

• It originate in the united states in the 1970s.

• Environmental auditing was introduced to UK and else where mainly by MNCs who began to apply the audit procedures.

• Historically it has been developed for industrial( chemical and manufacturing) applications.

DEFINITIONS• The term environmental auditing is broad.

Private sector environmental auditing has been variously defined as:

A management tool comprising a systematic, documented, periodic and objective evaluation of the performance of the organization , management system and processes designed to protect the environment with the aim of:

1. Facilitating management control of practices which may have impact on the environment and

2. Assessing compliance with company policies.

ENVIRONMENTAL AUDITING PRACTICE AND PROCEDURES

The more specific type of environmental audit involves the collection, collation, analysis, interpretation and presentation of information which is used to assess performance against a set of requirements or targets, related to specific issues.

TYPES 1. Liability audit :- Liability audit assess

compliance with legal obligations.2. Management audit :- Management audit verify that

an environmental strategy meet its stated objectives.

3. Functional audit (activity or issue audit):- An activity audit may

investigate specific area such as energy or water use.

Environmental auditing and environmental management system(ems)

• An ems is a tool designed to enable organizations to target , achieve and demonstrate continuous improvement in environmental performance. It is one integrated management process with a number of stages , which includes environmental audit.

TRENDS AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS Audit programmes are becoming a standard

environmental management tool and pressures for the disclosure of audit results are increasing.

The utility of environmental audits vary from organization to organization.

Provide baseline information to enable organizations to evaluate and manage environmental change, threat and risk.

Environmental audits have traditionally dealt with the environmental effects of industrial process and, to a lesser extend , with resource consumption.

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