You need to be aware of your company’s environmental duties and responsibilities. You should actively determine which environmental laws apply and then take any appropriate actions, such as approaching the authorities for appropriate licences or permits and ensuring that your activities conform to the relevant statutes and regulations.
The purpose of some environmental laws is to allow prosecution of companies which cause pollution, for example, following an incident. Other environmental laws are preventative. There are several legal measures which are designed to control potentially polluting processes so that environmental damage does not happen in the first place (see emissions overview IPPC).
Prior consent
Environmental laws are increasingly based on systems of prior consent. In other words, the business is the subject of enforcement action not because it has actually damaged the environment but because it is operating outside the conditions of its permit, for example.
A further extension of environmental law in recent years has been so-called ‘producer responsibility’ law. Here, the business which is legally held to have brought a material into being is legally responsible for the ‘environmental cost’ of that material throughout its life cycle (see waste management producer responsibility).
When an organisation adopts one of the recognised environmental management systems (e.g. ISO14001 see environmental management systems), it must show that it is not breaching any environmental laws.
When organisations first survey their environmental performance, they may find that they are breaking the law, for instance, by having overlooked issues such as poor record keeping for solid waste, risky waste storage practices or illegal connections to surface water drainage or sewers.
Often, although these practices may be hazardous to the environment, they are relatively easy to rectify. However, the risk may well mean that the authorities would take enforcement action, and possibly prosecute whether or not the failure resulted in a pollution incident.