Environmental management - Definition

An environmental management standard or system or protocol attempts to reduce environmental impact as measured by some objective criteria. The ISO 14000 standard is the most widely used standard for environmental risk management. The ISO 19011 standard explains how to combine this with quality management.

Other EM systems (or EMS) tend to be based on this standard and to extend it in various ways:

• Natural Step focuses on basic sustainability criteria and helps focus engineering on reducing use of materials or energy use that is unsustainable in the long term
• Natural Capitalism advises using accounting reform and a general biomimicry and industrial ecology approach to do the same thing
• US Environmental Protection Agency has many further terms and standards that it defines as appropriate to large-scale EMS
• The UN and World Bank has encouraged adopting a "natural capital" measurement and management framework.

Other strategies exist that rely on making simple distinctions rather than building top-down management "systems" using performance audits and full cost accounting. For instance, Ecological Intelligent Design divides products into consumables, service products or durables and unsaleables - toxic products that no one should buy, or in many cases, do not realize they are buying. By eliminating the unsaleables from the comprehensive outcome of any purchase, better environmental management is achieved without "systems".