Deciding on your priorities - relative significance of aspects and impacts

There is no standard approach for evaluating significance of aspects and impacts.

ISO14001 does not require that all the impacts are reduced at once. High ranking aspects and their impacts may well be the first targets in a programme of environmental improvements. Rank the identified aspects in order of relative significance and address them in turn.

In terms of evaluating significance (i.e. establishing priority areas), ISO 14004: 2004 suggests that the following factors are considered:

A fundamental requirement of EMS standards is compliance with the law. Therefore, the environmental aspects/impacts and their associated activities (or products) that are directly regulated must be considered to be ‘significant’.

The ‘significance’ of non-regulated aspects should be determined by stakeholder priorities. Stakeholders (other than regulators) may include:

• customers
• local community
• general public
• suppliers
• employees
• pressure groups
• shareholders
• financier/bank manager
• insurer

(See definition of stakeholders in environmental management systems.)

Depending on the stakeholders and their expectations of the organisation's environmental performance, the following questions might form the basis of the criteria to test significance of the organisation's impacts:

Regulatory based questions:

In terms of the aspect or activity associated with it:

• Is it subject to existing regulatory controls?
• Is it expected to be subject to regulatory control in the near future/short term (e.g. impending new, or amending, legislation within the next year)?
• Is there a high probability that new regulatory controls will apply in the medium term (e.g. within the next five years)?
• Is it covered by a voluntary code of practice which specifies precautions taken to protect the environment
• Would the emergency services be called if there was an incident?

'Non regulatory' based questions:

In terms of the aspect/impact or associated activity:

• Is it a cause of serious complaint (seriousness may be defined by stakeholder origin, its nature and frequency)?
• Is there a potential that it will be a cause of serious complaint?
• Is there an unacceptable risk of incurring environmental liability – civil or criminal (based on probability of its occurrence, its magnitude, its frequency and the ability to detect it)?
  
  For example, this would apply to activities/aspects which are not directly subject to regulatory control and but which might cause a breach in the law through accidents or abnormal operation (e.g. materials handling and storage spillages reaching a controlled water).
  
• Are there important financial or commercial implications associated with it? For example:
  • market/sales implications resulting from customer expectations?
  • costs/savings resulting from efficiency
  • improvements/insurance premiums?
• Does it have a demonstrable impact on the environment?

The following is a simple matrix (see below) for evaluating significance of environmental impacts. This could be applicable for smaller organisations. Larger organisations with more complex environmental aspects might benefit from more complex numerical scoring systems.

Simple Matrix for Evaluation of Environmental Impacts

It is important to keep a record of the evaluation process, including that conducted on the aspects/impacts which were not identified as significant, especially if certification is a goal.

Life Cycle Assessment

(See waste minimisation)

Life cycle assessment examines environmental impacts throughout the entire life cycle of a product. It is concerned with complete production/consumption systems.

Such an examination can help provide insights not only into minimising environmental impacts across the whole of a product’s life but also increase resource efficiency through improved design, better performance management in use and improved waste management.