Environmental policy is any course of action deliberately taken to manage human activities with a view to prevent, reduce, or mitigate harmful effects on nature and natural resources, and ensuring that man-made changes to the environment do not have harmful effects on humans.
It is useful to consider that environmental policy comprises two major terms: environment and policy. Environment primarily refers to the ecological dimension, but can also take account of social dimension and an economic dimension. Policy can be defined as a course of action or principle adopted or proposed by a government, party, business or individual. Thus, environmental policy focuses on problems arising from human impact on the environment, which affect human society by having a negative impact on human values such as quality of life, good health or the ‘clean and green’ environment.
Environmental issues generally addressed by environmental policy include air and water pollution, waste management, ecosystem management, biodiversity protection, and the protection of natural resources, wildlife and endangered species. Relatively recently, environmental policy has also attended to the communication of environmental issues.
A Corporate environmental policy is an agreed documented statement of a company’s stance towards the environment in which it operates.
The policy is the corner stone of its intent to reduce its 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 stakeholders.
Although there is not legal requirement or standard structure for an environmental policy there are key areas that such a policy should contain. It should say what the key objectives that the company is following, who is accountable and how these are going to be achieved and by whom.
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