Page Title

Contents

Executive Summary
Introduction and Purpose of the Environmental Management System Innovation Initiative
  Approach
  Legislative Authority
  Cal/EPA Team
  Background
  Environmental Management System Definition
Scope and Implementation
  Selection Criteria
  Pilot Project Plan Elements
  Data Collection and Timeline
Public Involvement and Outreach
  Web Site
  Public Hearing
  Working Groups
  Participation in Multi-State Working Group on EMSs

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Executive Summary

Finding more effective and innovative ways to achieve superior environmental protection is the primary goal of the Cal/EPA Environmental Management System (EMS) Innovation Initiative. Earlier this year, Governor Gray Davis formally established the Cal/EPA EMS Innovation Initiative. In the 1999 legislative session, AB 1102 was passed, cosponsored by Assembly Members Jackson, Nakano, Correa, Reyes and Senator Sher. The Cal/EPA EMS Innovation Initiative is designed to inform public policy makers and engage stakeholders in determining whether and how the use of an EMS:

1. increases public health and environmental protection and
2. provides better public information than existing regulatory requirements.

In order to determine if an EMS provides these benefits, Cal/EPA will conduct up to eight pilot projects. Voluntary partnerships have been established with representatives from the beverage, metal finishing, wastewater treatment, computer and defense industries. Data on changes in environmental performance and regulatory compliance, pollution prevention, and stakeholder involvement will be collected and evaluated, as well as information on the types and quality of information available to stakeholders.

Facilitating the establishment of partnerships between communities, environmental organizations, industry, government, and academia is a major element of the Initiative. Draft pilot selection criteria, project plan elements, data collection, and reporting requirements have been developed with outside stakeholder working groups. Two public hearings are planned for April 2000 in order to receive public comment on the proposed pilot projects and the monitoring and evaluation parameters. Cal/EPA will report quarterly on progress to the legislature, and will provide a final analysis by January 1, 2002. Public involvement and outreach include a newly created web site, upcoming public hearings, ongoing facilitation of working groups, and participation in the Multi-State Working Group on EMSs.  

Introduction

The mission of the California Environmental Protection Agency (Cal/EPA) is to improve environmental quality in order to protect public health, the welfare of our citizens, and California’s natural resources. Cal/EPA will achieve its mission in an equitable, efficient, and cost-effective manner. In order to find more effective and innovative ways to achieve superior environmental protection, Cal/EPA launched the Environmental Management System Innovation Initiative. Through the evaluation of environmental management systems in pilot projects, research into other States’ initiatives and community dialogue, Cal/EPA hopes to uncover and highlight systems and practices that will provide better environmental performance and lead us toward a more sustainable California.

Purpose of the Environmental Management System Innovation Initiative
The primary goal of the Cal/EPA Environmental Management System Innovation Initiative is to find more effective and innovative ways to achieve superior environmental protection. Increasing use of Environmental Management Systems (EMSs) by industry and their use as a part of the regulatory structure by some state governments provides an opportunity to examine the benefits EMSs may bring in protecting and enhancing California’s environment.

The EMS Innovation Initiative is designed to inform public policy makers and engage stakeholders in determining whether and how the use of an EMS:

1. increases public health and environmental protection and
2. provides better public information than existing regulatory requirements.

Approach
In order to determine if an EMS provides these benefits, Cal/EPA will conduct up to eight pilot projects. Data on changes in environmental performance and regulatory compliance, pollution prevention, and stakeholder involvement will be collected and evaluated, as well as information on the types and quality of information available to stakeholders. Quarterly progress reports will be submitted to the Legislature, with the final analysis due January 1, 2002.

Success of the Cal/EPA EMS Innovation Initiative is dependent on the participation and contributions of all stakeholders. Facilitating the establishment of partnerships between communities, environmental organizations, industry, government, and academia is a major element of the Initiative. For this purpose, Northern and Southern California working groups with representation from these interests have been set up by Cal/EPA to give guidance on the Initiative, as well as to the pilot projects in EMS design and implementation.

A Cal/EPA representative chairs the Multi-State Working Group (MSWG) on EMSs, a consortium of 49 member and observer states, which exists to coordinate the efforts of all its participants in improving understanding of EMSs.

Legislative Authority
Earlier this year, Governor Gray Davis formally established the Cal/EPA EMS Innovation Initiative. Assembly Bill 1102 was cosponsored by Assembly Members Jackson, Nakano, Correa, Reyes and Senator Sher. Governor Gray Davis signed Assembly Bill 1102 on July 6, 1999. The statute codifies and clarifies existing practices in Public Resources Code, Section 71045 et. seq. January 1, 2000 is set forth as the Initiative’s establishment date, and it is due to sunset on January 1, 2002. Appropriation from the State’s General Fund provides the revenue to support this work.

CalEPA team
A multi-disciplinary Cal/EPA team administered through the Office of the Secretary manages the EMS Initiative. Team members from the Air Resources Board, Department of Toxic Substances Control, Integrated Waste Management Board, and State Water Resources Control Board serve as project managers for the pilots.

Background
Over the past 30 years, the first generation of environmental protection laws and regulations, most focused on the protection of human health, have led to dramatic improvements in air and water quality and in waste disposal. Most laws, regulations, and environmental agencies have been organized around media (air, water and land) or around material type (pesticides, toxic substances and municipal solid waste). Laws and regulations establishing standards for the responsible use, control and discharge/disposal of the various pesticides, hazardous materials and solid wastes have grown in both number and complexity. The logistical, technical and legal difficulties in monitoring and enforcing these rules have also increased apace. The costs to both "control" pollution and to repair the damage caused by prior practices have increased for both business and government. The result has been much progress, but also a growing volume of prescriptive regulations that are, at times, conflicting or duplicative, and that have, by necessity, focused both regulated organizations and regulatory agencies almost exclusively on keeping pace with updated regulations and on achieving compliance.

Environmental Protection - Management Technologies and Strategies
Focus on protection of human health Invest in "end-of the pipe" clean up Respond to "command and control" regulation - standards or prohibition - inspection and enforcement - restoration and set asides Prepare environmental impact statements

Over these 30 years, however, much has changed. California’s population, the number of regulated organizations and the production of goods and services have all increased significantly. This has created more sources and greater amounts of both regulated and unregulated materials with potential for environmental impact. Development time from product concept to market has dropped from years to months or even weeks, each product possibly introducing new hazardous materials and waste streams that regulators must incorporate into the regulatory structure. Environmental aspects and impacts (e.g., global warming, ozone depletion, endocrine disrupters), unrecognized even ten years ago, are creating demands for wide ranging regulation by government and control by industry. There is a growing realization that environmental impacts are not easily contained to a single medium, and that improvement action taken in one medium can cause significant and unintended problems in another. Over this same time period, government’s investment in the people, technologies, and process improvements needed to respond to these changes has not kept pace.

Business organizations have also changed, from almost uniform unawareness of, or disregard for, the environmental carrying capacity of the three media and of the impact they create, to a much wider range of demonstrated environmental responsibility. At one extreme are those companies that continue to violate environmental regulations, for which strong and certain enforcement appears to be the main factor influencing environmental behavior. At the other end of the spectrum, leading edge companies have moved beyond compliance to embrace the concepts of sustainability and environmental stewardship. They have redesigned products and production processes to take their environmental performance far beyond regulatory compliance and have also made dramatic improvements in non-regulated environmental aspects. Most have environmental management systems incorporated into all aspects of the company operations. They have made public their environmental performance in annual reports and have opened their environmental management process to public input. There is increasing evidence not only that many environmental improvements save money over the long term, but that environmentally conscious companies consistently outperform their rivals in the stock market.

There is a common set of practices that many of these companies have adopted, that fall under the heading of "eco-efficiency."

Eco-efficiency – Management Technologies and Strategies

Integrate environmental aspects into the management system Target significant environmental improvement - Compliance - Reduced material intensity of goods and services - Reduced energy intensity of production and distribution - Enhanced pollution prevention - Enhanced materials recyclability and recycling - Maximized sustainable use of renewable resources - Extended product durability - Increased service intensity of goods and services. Publicly report on the results

The broad policy question, which this study seeks to address only in part, is how can regulatory agencies best use their resources to significantly strengthen environmental protection while at the same time partnering with businesses and non government organizations to encourage and recognize "beyond compliance" environmental actions? The California EMS Innovation Initiative is a carefully designed study to identify one possible part of the answer to that question.

Environmental Management System Definition
An environmental management system (EMS) is a process by which an organization’s management identifies regulated and unregulated environmental aspects and impacts of its operations, assesses current performance, and develops targets and plans to achieve significant environmental improvements. It may also be expanded to consider both the environmental impacts produced by suppliers of raw materials and parts, as well as the impact of the use of the product or service by the customer. An EMS is designed to integrate environmental management into the organization’s overall management system by identifying the policies, environmental targets, measurements, authority structures and resources necessary to produce both compliance with regulations as well as beyond compliance environmental performance.

 

 

EMSs embody the "plan-do-check-adjust" improvement cycle and typically involve;

• developing an environmental policy,
• developing a stakeholder involvement / communication strategy,
• identifying both the regulated and unregulated environmental aspects and impacts of the organization’s operations,
• determining supply chain relationships and their environmental aspects and impacts,
• identifying legal, regulatory and contractual environmental requirements as well as environmental issues of concern to the local community,
• identifying current performance and establishing objectives and targets for environmental improvement,
• developing the management structure and identifying the necessary resources and responsibilities to meet the targets,
• initiating training and employee awareness activities,
• creating measures to monitor progress in

- targeted environmental performance
- regulatory compliance
- EMS implementation

• developing an emergency preparedness process,
• initiating pollution prevention activities,
• creating process documentation and control procedures,
• performing an EMS system audit,
• conducting a management review of the audit results,
• taking corrective action to correct identified deficiencies.

When fully and conscientiously implemented, an EMS provides the framework for management to collect information on the organization’s impacts on the environment and to turn that knowledge into plans and actions to improve environmental performance and better enable employees to perform their jobs in an environmentally conscious manner.

Implementation of an EMS does not, however, guarantee either improved regulatory compliance or significantly improved environmental performance beyond compliance. Thus, adoption of an EMS is not a substitute for existing regulatory requirements, but has the potential to provide an organization’s management with a roadmap for environmental improvement. Certainty that the EMS has accomplished improvement requires both rigorous data collection in the targeted environmental areas and a process to make those results visible to interested parties. The data collection protocols that are an integral part of the Environmental Management System Innovation Initiative EMS study focus on obtaining answers to these concerns.

Scope and Implementation

A description of the scope and implementation of the EMS Innovation Initiative follows. It includes the draft pilot selection criteria, project plan elements, data collection, and reporting requirements.

Selection Criteria
The Cal/EPA team has developed draft pilot project selection criteria with suggestions from the working groups:

1. Pilot projects should have an ongoing or planned EMS that can reasonably be expected to produce greater environmental protection than would otherwise be achieved by the existing regulatory process.
2. Pilot projects should be willing to share information and be able to provide specific data on the goals, implementation, and performance of their EMS.
3. Pilot projects should declare any environmental deficiencies (i.e., regulatory noncompliances, violations).
4. Pilot projects should be willing to address known regulatory deficiencies through their EMS.
5. Pilot projects’ top management should make a full commitment to participate in the project.
6. Pilot projects should commit to work with all stakeholders in the EMS process.
7. Pilot projects should commit to provide environmental information on the facility and its EMS through public outreach.
8. Pilot projects should represent diversity in terms of location/geography, size, industry type or sector, environmental impacts, and in the range of EMS maturity.
9. Pilot projects should engage in a multi-media environmental approach (e.g., air, water, solid and hazardous waste).

To date, voluntary partnerships have been established with representatives from the following industry sectors;

1. beverage industry,
2. metal finishing industry,
3. wastewater treatment industry,
4. computer industry, and
5. defense industry.

Pilot Project Plan Elements
After each pilot project is selected, a CalEPA manager is appointed to coordinate the project. Each facility prepares, with the assistance of the program manager, a project plan that includes the following elements:

• title and approval sheet,
• table of contents,
• distribution list,
• project organization,
• project scope and background,
• project description,
• stakeholder involvement,
• quality objectives and criteria for measurement of data,
• data collection and management, and
• data quality assessment.

Data Collection and Timeline
The study design requires that three years of baseline data on environmental performance prior to the introduction of the EMS be collected. In addition, descriptive information about the design of the EMS and four biannual updates of data on environmental performance following the introduction of the EMS will also be collected. In coordination with other MSWG states, detailed data protocols have been developed to collect information as described below. The data protocols are available for review through a web site link at http://www.calepa.ca.gov/EMS or at http://www.mswg.org.

Pilot project information will be collected in the following categories:

• EMS design
• Environmental Performance
• Regulatory Compliance
• Use of Pollution Prevention Techniques
• Continual Improvement
• Employee Involvement
• Involvement of Interested Parties
• Quality and Quantity of Information

Cal/EPA is currently coordinating with stakeholders to identify any existing sources of information that will assist with addressing the above questions. One of the key information sources that will be drawn on is the EMS data submitted by facilities participating in the MSWG effort.

Additional information needs will be identified by Cal/EPA in consultation with stakeholders over the next several months. Specifically, it is expected that various public forums such as the Northern and Southern California Working Groups will play an important role in identifying further information needs as well as the most effective vehicles for obtaining such information. Most of the categories of information useful to the California study are contained in the Multi-State Working Group (MSWG) data collection protocols.

California is currently collecting MSWG baseline and EMS design data for existing proposed pilots. Cal/EPA reports on quarterly progress to the legislature, and will provide a final analysis of results by January 1, 2002.

Public Involvement and Outreach

Public and stakeholder involvement and outreach regarding this study include a newly created web site, upcoming public hearings, ongoing meetings of the working groups, and participation in the Multi-State Working Group on EMSs.

Web Site
A web site has been created to provide information on the Initiative and related efforts (http://www.calepa.ca.gov/EMS/).

Public Hearing
Two public hearings are planned for April 2000, one in Northern California and one in Southern California, in order to receive public comment on the proposed pilot projects and the monitoring and evaluation parameters. Descriptions of the proposed pilot projects and draft monitoring and evaluation parameters will be provided to the public for comment in January. The public hearing will be noticed at least 30 days prior to the event, through the mail, press releases, and posting on the Cal/EPA web site.

After receiving public comment, Cal/EPA will respond to the general comments and notice the selection of pilot projects and the establishment of monitoring and evaluation parameters.

Working Groups
Northern and Southern California working groups involving community groups, environmental organizations, industry, academia, and local, state and federal regulatory agencies have been established to facilitate dialogue about project design and implementation and regional concerns. The Working Groups are developing a common understanding and knowledge of EMSs through training organized by Cal/EPA and funded through a grant from the U.S. EPA Office of Water. Facility tours and presentations are being provided by proposed pilot organizations. The working groups will be advising pilot organizations on the development and continual improvement of their EMSs, evaluating the performance of EMSs, and exploring related public policy issues.

The next quarterly California Working Group meetings will be held in February 2000. The purpose of these meetings is to share information on the proposed pilot projects, draft pilot selection criteria, and draft monitoring and evaluation criteria as an informal review prior to the public hearing.

Participation in Multi-State Working Group on EMSs
In late 1996, representatives of several states met to discuss common interests in EMS, and it became clear that many states, with both Democratic and Republican administrations, were keenly interested in the EMS developments. These states decided to conduct pilot programs to understand the relevancy and value to regulatory programs. From these initial discussions, the Multi-State Working Group on Environmental Management Systems (MSWG) developed, which now lists the membership of forty-nine states, participating or observing, four federal agencies, a substantial number of business, public interest groups, and academic institutions. An open process, involving quarterly meetings and annual workshops, has been established which has strong involvement of public interest groups. More than one hundred organizations are participating as pilot projects in the United States. A national database is being established to support ongoing research on the performance of EMSs.

California chairs the MSWG and is contributing data on environmental performance and EMS design to the national database. California will plan and host the MSWG national workshop in San Diego in June 2000. Four hundred participants are anticipated. They will meet to discuss the latest EMS, sustainable development, and innovation projects in the U.S. and internationally.