Companies in Compliance to Save Environment

 Environmental audit is a general term that can reflect various types or evaluations intended to identify environmental compliance and management system implementation gaps, along with related corrective actions.

In that period the developed countries were adopting the environmental legislation in order to reduce the harmful consequences of the companies' actions that had affected the environment. At the beginning the environmental auditing involved reviews of independent experts assessing whether companies operated in line with the demands of the environmental legislation. Presently the companies decide to undertake environmental audits in order to obtain an independent external assessment whether the management has created efficient environmental policy and provided for acceptable environmental attitude. The most important results of the environmental audits are recommendations how a company can reduce the damaging impacts on the environment in an efficient and cost-benefit manner, and how it can in a long-term save funds by using environment friendly technology.

The systematic, periodic, documented and objective aspects of environmental auditing are fundamental to effectiveness. It is fast developing as an important and powerful tool in the corporate environmental assessment and management toolkit.

While environmental audits are designed to identify environmental problems, there may be widely differing reasons for undertaking them: compliance with legislation, pressure from suppliers and customers, requirements from insurers or for capital projects, or to demonstrate environmental activities to the public. The benefits of environmental auditing include:

-Ensuring compliance, not only with laws, regulations and standards, but also with company policies and the requirements of an Environmental

-Enabling environmental problems and risks to be anticipated and responses planned;

-To demonstrate that an organization is aware of its impact upon the environment through providing feedback;

-Increased awareness amongst stakeholders; and

-More efficient resource use and financial savings.