Environmental Management System

• What is an EMS?
  • Environmental Management System (EMS)
  • Field Practices
  • Systematic Management
• Scope
• Albany Plantation Forest Company
• Albany Plantation Export Company
• Locations

What is an EMS?

Environmental Management System (EMS)

An EMS is simply the systematic management of those environmental impacts that an organizations activities have on the environment.

Managed according to what standards?
Management is to set of performance standards that arise from the organizations objectives. Generally there are three common standards considered, the first two relating to field practices and the third to the way they are managed;

Field Practices

• Australian Forestry Standard (AFS) - this is a National standard aligned with the Montreal Process Criteria and Indicators for sustainable forest management. It conforms to the National Forest Policy and needs to be recognized by other countries to become internationally acceptable. Given this, and a reciprocal acceptance by Australia of other countries standards, the AFS will have international standing through mutual recognition;
• Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) - this Council has established the FSC Principals and Criteria and accredits other certification organizations, which have prepared performance standards incorporating their principles and criteria, to certify a company as conforming to the standard.

Systematic Management

• ISO 14001 - this is an international standard for systematic environmental management. Although not specifically nominated by AFS or FSC, these two field standards require an EMS to demonstrate that their implementation is both systematic and thorough.
• An organisation will have its own objectives but when seeking formal accreditation will need to align them with one of the recognised performance standard for field practices and have an EMS.

Who says that management is good enough?
Who needs to say that management is good enough depends on a company's clientele. When its clients are external to the company an independent third party is usually engaged to audit practices against a standard. Field practices must be accredited but the EMS need not be, as long as the auditor is satisfied with the standard of performance.

What do we mean by environment?
The environment is taken to be the surrounding in which an organisation operates, including air, water, land, natural resources, flora, fauna, humans and their interrelation (surrounding in this context extend from within an organisation to the global system).

What makes an EMS systematic and thorough?
ISO 14001 is used as the example to answer this question. It is a systematic, comprehensive and logical cycle that provides for continuous improvement through the application of seventeen elements that are arranged into five groups (see figure 1). Elements are linked to on another and all are reviewed at least annually to ensure completeness and relevance.

Figure 1

Scope

The scope of Albany Plantation Forest Company's EMS includes its forestry activities, and the harvest activity of Albany Plantation Export Company, that are:

Albany Plantation Forest Company

Land Acquisition and Site Evaluation

• Property evaluation;
• Soil mapping;

Establishment

First Rotation

• Minor clearing of vegetation and site clean-up to enable plantation establishment;
• Construction of roads, tracks firebreaks and waterpoints, and boundary demarcation;
• Preparation of site through drainage, soil cultivation and or mounding;
• Planting and fertilizing tree seedlings;
• Control of weeds and feral animals;
• Control of insect pests;
  

  Second Rotation

• Coppice treatment, or
• Preparation of site with possible Euc globulus stump removal;
• Planting and fertilizing tree seedlings;
• Control of weeds and feral animals;
• Control of insect pests;
  

Maintenance

• Maintenance of roads, tracks, firebreaks and waterpoints;
• Control of weeds and feral animals;
• Control of insect pests;
• Fertilizing;
• Grazing;
• Fencing;

Forestry activities do not include the nursery work of raising seedlings.

Albany Plantation Export Company

Harvest

• Upgrade of roads to suit heavy haulage (use by log trucks);
• Felling of trees and delivery of logs to the processing mill;
  

Harvest activities cease at the weighbridge and do not include any processing of logs into woodchips.

Locations

These forestry activities take place in the Great Southern Region of Western Australia