Environmental audits

An environmental audit is a good way of measuring an organisation’s environmental impacts, and enables informed decisions to be made about managing those impacts.

Areas covered and benefits delivered

The environmental impacts covered by an audit may include:

• Energy
• Carbon dioxide and other emissions
• Waste
• Water
• Transport
• Biodiversity
• Procurement

(Please note, if we have recently carried out carbon footprinting or an energy survey for you, this will reduce the amount of work and therefore the fee.)

The benefits of the audit include:

• Ensuring legislative compliance
• Reducing environmental impacts
• Reducing waste, water and energy costs (annual savings are typically greater than our fee for the audit)
• Improving relations with stakeholders
• Providing the foundation for an environmental management system (EMS) such as ISO 14001 at a later date

Types of audit

The Green Consultancy offers you three levels of audit and review. With each one, we provide a referenced report that includes statements of methodology and assumptions.

1: Basic audit

Impacts covered are:

• Energy use
• Carbon dioxide emissions (carbon footprint)
• Solid waste
• Water consumption

2: Intermediate audit

Impacts covered are as per the basic audit, plus:

• Transport and travel (commuting and business)
• Procurement (for example, raw materials, food and office consumables)
• Environmental policy and practices

3: Baseline review

This audit is more comprehensive and is compliant with ISO 7750 and 14001 standards. By complying with a recognised standard, this audit is a more satisfactory method of reporting to stakeholders, and provides the immediate or future starting point for an environmental management system (EMS).

A Baseline Review provides the following:

• An audit of all principle environmental impacts over which the organisation has control or influence
• A gap analysis of the changes required to improve the organisation’s existing environmental management procedures
• A Legal Compliance Register listing all regulations applicable to the organisation’s significant environmental impacts.
• An Environmental Aspects Register listing the organisation’s environmental aspects cross-referenced with the Legal Compliance Register. The Environmental Aspects Register uses a significance rating or score so that your organisation can determine which environmental aspects are significant and therefore must be managed to meet the chosen standard.
• Written procedures detailing how your organisation ensures that its Legal Compliance Register and Environmental Aspects Register are relevant and maintained, and how the assessment of the significance of the Environmental Aspects is carried out.

› Read more about our environmental auditing process

To discover how an environmental audit from The Green Consultancy can help your organisation reduce its environmental impact, call Michael Webb on 08450 176300, or email Michael@GreenConsultancy.com