Environmental Management Systems (EMS)

An Environmental Management System (EMS) is the part of an organization's overall management system that integrates environmental concerns and issues in the organization's management processes. An EMS addresses organizational structure, planning activities, responsibilities, practices, procedures, processes, and resources for developing, implementing, achieving, reviewing, and maintaining environmental policy.

An EMS enables an organization of any size or type to control the impact of its activities, products, or services on the natural environment, allowing it to not only achieve and maintain compliance with current environmental requirements, but to recognize and proactively manage future issues that might impact mission sustainability.

The Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army (Environment, Safety, and Occupational Health) signed an action memorandum on EMS, which directs installations to meet the following requirements:

Implementation shall be initiated NLT [no later than] FY04, with an environmental management system in place NLT 31 December 2005.
The Army will adopt the internationally recognized management system standard, ISO 14001, as a goal.
Full conformance with the ISO 14001 standard shall be completed NLT FY09.

Traditional belief was that effective environmental management involved the implementation of programs to meet regulatory requirements and helped an organization avoid negative consequences. The new philosophy is effective environmental management, using EMS can help support mission accomplishment and sustainability, while integrating environmental goals throughout the entire Army culture. EMS is an ongoing and systematic process of establishing priorities, managing and reducing environmental impacts, achieving continual improvement, and ultimately increasing readiness. The EMS approach to environmental protection requires collective responsibility of every employee on the installation. It can instill an environmental ethic throughout the workforce similar to the manner in which responsibility for safety has become a part of every day life. This broad culture change will take time and an active, consistent leadership commitment, but will ultimately allow the Army to make systematic management of environmental activities a tool for mission accomplishment and to foster an ethic of sustainability throughout the Army.

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Training Materials/Briefings

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EMS Articles, Lessons Learned and Success Stories

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ISO Standards

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