Environmental objectives and targets

If you’re looking to reduce your business’ environmental impact, or to follow an environmental management standard, identifying aims and objectives may help.

what’s covered?

Simply stating that you’re going green doesn’t really cut it these days - especially if you’re looking to formalise the way you manage environmental issues by working to a defined management standard, i.e. ISO 14001. Instead, you need to identify the areas in which you need to focus your efforts and targets that you hope to achieve.

Formal record

Our Environmental Objectives and Targets document can be used to record what you plan to do, what actions are required and who will complete them. The first part asks for details about the individual(s) completing the plan, their position within the organisation, the date on which the plan was written and a date for revision.

The main part of the document is a table, with six columns headed: “Objective”; “Actions”; “Target”; “To be completed by”; “Timescale”; and “Date completed”.

In addition, we’ve broken down managing environmental risks into a number of sections: “Waste and recycling”; “Hazardous waste”; “Statutory nuisance”; “Energy”; “Water”; “Construction and refurbishment”; “Transport”; “Biodiversity”; “Procurement”; and “Community involvement”.

These are the main areas of environmental management. If, however, your business may impact the environment in another way, the topic should be added to the end of the document.