Over the past two days, I have attended the IEMA Sustainable Business Conference and have been impressed by the quality of the presentations, workshops and the level of engagement by the delegates. The conference lived up to its tagline of “Environmental Professionals Driving Change”.
It is, always. rewarding to hear of the best environmental management practice from a range of businesses together with the growing development and implementation of sustainable business models.
My main thoughts on the use of Environmental Management Systems (EMS) from the conference, which will be of interest to readers of this blog are:
The role of environmental legislation in driving sustainable business practice was highlighted with concerns that SMEs do not have the resources and competence to respond to this driver.
The opportunity to gain the most from accredited EMS certification was highlighted in an interactive workshop and linked to the publication of “for” and “against” opinions to be published in the IEMA journal, the environmentalist.
The future developments and direction of the revision programme of ISO 14001 & the opportunities of all stakeholders to contribute to this process to ensure that EMS continue to deliver enhanced environmental performance and outcomes.
Over the coming weeks, the presentations will be published on the IEMA website: www.iema.net and I will update on the issues in a future blog.