Protecting the environment: the role of environmental management systems

Abstract

Environmental management and auditing systems are increasingly important. They have significant roles to play in relation to environmental protection, workplace safety and public health. Businesses and non-commercial organisations adopt such systems for a variety of reasons. The extent to which they are used varies very considerably between developed countries. The effectiveness of national regulatory systems seems to be a major factor. In the United Kingdom environmental regulators have traditionally sought the voluntary compliance of businesses. This strategy is closely associated with the near absence of administrative penalties. It seems that a wide range of environmental administrative penalties will be introduced in the near future. This may greatly encourage more firms to introduce environmental management and auditing systems.

Why, How and What do Organizations Achieve with the Implementation of Environmental Management Systems?—Lessons from a Comprehensive Review on the Eco-Management and Audit Scheme

“…Table 1. Major motivations influencing the adoption of EMAS (adapted from [11][12][13][14][15][16]18,[20][21][22][23] The combination of motivations behind EMAS implementation summarized in Table 1 may result in different organisational profiles. This was the focus of Priego et al [15] who proposed a classification that includes four types of organisations: strategic, followers, greenwashers and laggers.…”

“…Interviews with accreditation bodies, environmental verifiers and EMAS-registered sites in EU countries were conducted by Hillary [10] in the analysis of difficulties in implementing EMAS. Other studies are mainly focused on national environmental regulatory frameworks and their influence on the decision to implement EMAS [18,19].…”

Adoption of Green Environmental Practices in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: Entrepreneur and Business Policies Patterns in Romania

“…No significant differences were reported depending on the firms' and managers' characteristics, except for the finding that female managers are more likely to practice buying food in bulk, products re-use, and upcycling as well as mention and give details about other environmental actions they practice. As shown in the analysis of environmental policies in the firm, research confirms that women may have a more eco-centric attitude and be more socially oriented than men [84]. Finally, some correlations were observed between managers' individual behavior and "green" measures implemented in their firms.…”

“…This behavior is probably linked to the adoption of formal environmental management practices, which is proportional with the firm's size. The academic literature [84] acknowledges that the lack of adoption of formal management systems is a barrier for implementing environmental improvement in SMEs, but their adoption increases with the firm's size. On the other hand, our study shows that micro firms seem to be more inclined to reduce office supplies consumption, this behavior being in line with the manager's involvement.…”

Green Economic Development as the Framework for Green Finance and Green Investment

“…Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is a decisionsupport tool to assess the welfare effects of a project or an investment (Hansjürgens, 2004). Green economy initiatives require investments and reduction of environmental costs (Florea et al, 2021;Watson, 2006). Market instruments, government regulations, levies, charges, taxes can scale up green economy investments, as well as internalise the environmental costs and social externalities (Pizzol et al, 2014).…”