Aspects and Impacts

I apologise for the long delay between posts (not that there is a massive crowd awaiting my written word) but it means business has been good.

When building an Environmental Management System for the first time, The part that pretty much everyone gets wrong is their Aspects and Impacts (followed closely by legal and other requirements). The reason for this is fairly simple. Unless you have been trained in how to do it or have some assistance, it is actually very difficult and will require a lot of time and research to do it properly (depending on your business type).

When assessing your aspects and impacts you are essentially performing an environmental risk assessment on all tasks performed in your business. Unless you know what you are doing or have some guidance most people get it wrong because they don't know what they are doing.

If you are looking at getting your business ISO14001 certified do yourself a favour and enrol in a basic 2 day course on how to implement an EMS. It may cost you around $1500 but it is money well spent. Alternatively use that money to get a specialist to spend some time with you to explain how it works and how to apply it to your business.

If you have any questions though in regards to Aspects and Impacts contact me in the comments and I will be happy to help.