Environmental Management System

In September 2008, August Mack’s eCAP® (Compliance Assurance Program) was formally qualified as a Supplemental Environmental Project (SEP) through the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 7. August Mack’s eCAP® program is an Environmental Health and Safety Management System (EMS) that utilizes a team of August Mack experts to routinely and methodically assess and maintain compliance at clients’ facilities. The innovative program includes much more than just...

Don't forget to join us tomorrow for the free August Mack webinar. To attend, register here. In September 2008, August Mack’s eCAP® (Compliance Assurance Program) was formally qualified as a Supplemental Environmental Project (SEP) by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 7. The eCAP® program is an environmental (as well as health and safety) management system (EMS) that uses a team of August Mack experts to routinely and methodically assess and maintain compliance at a...

It's Hurricane Preparedness Week! The Environmental Protection Agency released an article with various links highlighting safety precautions that businesses and their surrounding communities could utilize to withstand hurricane season. The article consists of links discussing methods to combat debris, flooding and mold as well as protocols for chemical storage and spills.

EPA also highlights procedures specifically targeting wastewater treatment plants. Wastewater treatment plants are urged to...

Register here for the free August Mack webinar on June 21, 2012 at 10:00 a.m. In September 2008, August Mack’s eCAP® (Compliance Assurance Program) was formally qualified as a Supplemental Environmental Project (SEP) by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 7. The eCAP® program is an environmental (as well as health and safety) management system (EMS) that uses a team of August Mack experts to routinely and methodically assess and maintain compliance at a client’s...

Employees from August Mack's Dublin, Ohio office kicked off a 16-week spring golf league a couple weeks ago with 18 holes at Sahmrock Golf Club in Powell, Ohio.  Our Indianapolis employees will also participate in a golf league starting this week with an evening at the range, followed by 15 weeks of league play at Riverside Golf Course in Indianapolis, Indiana.  Good luck to all of our employee golfers... Hit 'em straight!

Employees pictured above from the 2011 Golf League at Riverside Golf...

Next week August Mack will be speaking on "What's New in Environmental", as well as exhibiting a booth at the Mid America Safety, Health & Environmental Conference & Expo at the Tan Tar Resort in Osage Beach, Missouri. The conference, commonly referred to as the "Mid Am Conference", will feature over eighty education workshops on a variety of health and safety topics. Be sure to check out the event website at the link above if you are interested.

Eric Emmett, who will be speaking, is an...

I've written a number of posts over the last year about Phase I Environmental Site Assessment quality control from various angles. A seemingly hardy system of checks and balances, if you will. From defining the All Appropriate Inquiry standard and knowing your consultant to helping better understand what a Recognized Environmental Condition (REC) means. But as often happens, Bill Wagner writing for commonground (a social networking community for environmental consultants and commercial real...

Register here for the free August Mack webinar on Thursday, March 8, 2012 titled "Changes to Indiana Closure Guidance." Are you currently cleaning up contaminated soil or groundwater, pursuing closure or evaluating contaminated property in Indiana? New guidance may change the way these situations are evaluated, cleaned up, and closed.

The Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) recently issued the pending Remediation Closure Guide (RCG) and Remediation Program Guide (RPG). These...

• The environmental policy has to be defined by top management
• The environmental policy must be made available to the public
• The environmental policy must be facility/company specific and incorporate the following:
  • Pollution Prevention
  • Compliance with Legal and Other Requirements
  • Continual Improvement.

• Develop...

If you are not motivated by the thought of saving thousands of dollars in operating costs, raw material costs and waste disposal costs as a result of obtaining ISO 14001 certification of your environmental management system then you might be interested in some of the other benefits. These include:

• Good public relations - the facility’s image with the public, regulatory agencies, lenders, and investors will be enhanced
• Improvement in environmental performance - the facility will experience...

There is no denying that attaining ISO 14001 certification of your environmental management system (EMS) requires financial resources. However, once a facility is certified, there is an opportunity to recoup some of the money spent in attaining the certification. One of the underlying principles of ISO 14001 is to create a program that if implemented will show continual improvement. This continual improvement is achieved and measured as part of the implementation of the EMS by evaluating on a...

It’s kind of strange listing an EMS document as one of the musts to successfully obtain ISO 14001 certification of an environmental management system (EMS) when the ISO14001 standard doesn’t actually require an EMS manual to be developed. Sure there is the requirement to develop documentation as part of your ISO 14001 program (quite a lot of documentation in fact), but there is actually no requirement to develop an EMS manual. So why develop one?   The same reason we document all sorts of things...

There is no getting around the fact that obtaining ISO 14001 certification of your environmental management system will require a commitment of financial and personnel resources. Financial resources will be required for items such as external training classes, consulting support, retaining a registrar to perform the registration audit and periodic surveillance audits to maintain the certification, and miscellaneous support items including signage, communication devices, office supplies, etc....

Four of the most important items needed to obtain ISO 14001 Environmental Management System certification are:

• A driver (a reason for obtaining the certification)
• A commitment of financial and personnel resources
• An gap analysis (initial  audit) of your existing ISO 14001 EMS
• An Environmental Management System document.

A company that is considering pursuing ISO 14001 certification should initially determine what is driving their decision. Who cares if there’s a reason to obtain...

Is your facility prepared to maintain its environmental compliance throughout the year?  Many manufacturing companies are struggling with ways to cost costs while still producing a high quality product and meeting the needs of their employees. One area that tends to be continually looked at from a cost-savings perspective is environmental, health and safety (EH&S). Often times, it is common for facilities to cut EH&S costs to save on overall operating expenses with the hope they will not be...

A reprint of one of our popular articles:

Hazardous material regulations are often found to be confusing and dense, and in our experience people often are not even clear on the delineation between a hazardous material and a hazardous waste. In response to the frequent questions we receive on this topic we have prepared a brief primer on hazardous materials management.

First, a few key words need to be defined:

• Solid Waste - any discarded material that is (1) abandoned, (2) recycled, burned to...

Having just attended the 2011 National Safety Council's Congress and Expo in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, I thought it would be a good time to remind everyone about the IS0 Occupational Health and Safety Management System standard (OHSAS) (ISO 18001).  ISO 18001 was introducted in 2007 and can be applied to any facility that wishes to:

• Establish an OH&S management system to eliminate or minimize risk to employees and other interested parties who may be exposed to OH&S risks associated with...