An Environmental Management System (EMS) is a system you can set in place to manage your environmental impact, both current and future. An EMS integrates environmental management into your business' daily operations, long term planning and other quality management systems. You can develop a simple plan for managing your EMS or a more comprehensive one that can be certified under the international standard ISO 14001.

There are a number of components in an EMS, including:

• environmental impact identification
  
  
• objectives and targets
  
  
• operational and emergency procedures
  
  
• responsibilities and reporting structure
  
  
• continual improvement.

Your business can benefit from implementing an EMS in a number of ways including rationalising resource use, making licences and permits easier to obtain and helping you meet your own environmental and quality targets.