Are you aware that there are many environmental laws and regulations that impose responsibilities and compliance requirements on businesses?

A good starting point to ensure compliance with the many laws and regulations would be to compile an Aspects and Impacts Register for your business. Compiling this Register entails considering and setting down all activities, processes and inputs involved in producing the goods and services of your business.

From this list, an assessment can then be made of the impacts that these processes and inputs have on the environment. It is important to look at the nature of these impacts, their likelihood of materialising and their severity on the environment.

The following are three examples of how business activities can impact on the environment:

• Chemicals and other pollutants in wastewater: these substances move into our wastewater and storm water systems, finding their way into our rivers and into our drinking water.
• Gases that are emitted into the air from various sources including chimney stacks: these gases negatively affect our air quality and contribute to climate change.
• General and hazardous waste that is disposed to landfills: if this waste is not contained and treated according to sound engineering and legal standards it can produce liquid waste or leachate that can carry toxic chemicals into our ground and surface water. Additionally methane gas, a greenhouse gas, is also emitted from the organic waste disposed to landfills and this also contributes negatively to climate change.

Compiling an Aspects and Impacts Register is one requirement to developing an environmental management system such as ISO 14001. An environmental management system can assist businesses in their risk management including managing financial risks and risks of civil and criminal legal liability.

It is also the starting point to identifying all legislation that is applicable to the business operations and with which business is required to be compliant, including the provincial laws and local municipal bylaws, the Gazetted norms and standards applying to the business and the authorisations and licenses required for the many business operations.

The Register is an important tool to ensure that everyone who is responsible for environmental legal compliance in the business is aware of their role and responsibility to monitor, avoid or mitigate activities that can have negative impacts on the environment.