An environmental policy is the commitment of an organisation or government to the laws, regulations, and other policy mechanisms concerning environmental issues.
The policy is the foundation of your intent to reduce your environmental impact, carbon footprint, improve recycling, reduce reliance on packaging, minimising waste, improve efficiencies on finite natural resources in all of the company’s operations and all departments.
All environmental commitments should be an integral part of the day to day activities, clearly communicated to all employees and may form part of an application for ISO 14001 certification or registration under the EMAS scheme.
With the launch of the Green Claims Code, it’s more vital than ever that your company has a robust and honest environmental policy.
Having a solid policy doesn’t need to be complicated. Being honest, transparent and communicating your success as well as struggles goes a long way to build trust with your stakeholders.
What is the best structure?
The best structure should be one that mirrors your brand, is authentic and represents your commitment. A generic template isn’t a good idea, as your commitments and impacts will be different to another company, even in your sector.
We believe a well-constructed, visual environmental policy shows you are invested in the content. Policies are now being asked for in more tender situations and more and more clients, employees, investors and stakeholders are interested so consider the structure as an additional way to sell your business, brand and something you are passionate about.
What should the policy contain?
Your policy is specific to your business and should consider all of the environmental impacts of your business, operations, products and people.
Write a list of all of the above, consider the environmental impact of each and ways with which you can commit, short, medium and long term to reducing and removing where possible these impacts.
A good basis for this would be a carbon footprint report, a detailed carbon footprint report both brings together the sources of your environmental impact but also places a carbon impact figure against it, providing you valuable information on the areas that need focus and in what order.
Here at SBS we work with our clients from the ground up in understanding them, their carbon footprint data and then working together to create a net-zero road map and environmental policy focused on your own business impact.
Read our environmental policy here
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