Assessment of the environmental status of companies in application of the sustainable process index for an adapted implementation of EMS - "Case study: Hungarian pulp and paper branch"

In our days no modern management can work without environmental protection. There is no question about necessity but a question for organisation of environmental protection in the company. More and more enterprises decide to implement Environmental Management Systems to meet the ongrowing public expectations for the protection of our environment. This voluntary; instruments aim through structured activities at the continuous reduction of the adverse effects of the enterprise on the environment. There are several guidelines, national and international standards available today that describe the structure and set criteria for contents and form of a functioning Environmental Management System. The most well-known are the EMAS-regulation of the EC, the BS 7750 and the ISO 14001. The stock-taking of the environmental protection in a company is the basis for the implementation of an Environmental Management System. The better and careful you analyse the environmental status at the beginning of a project, the easier you can set main emphasis on implementation, plan the course and find out the additional data you need for. In this work a concept is introduced where the Sustainable Process Index - SPI is used as another consultant's tool for registration of environmental status. The main advantage to other methods consists in a more objective assessment of the company's environmental standard in ecological sight with the aim of a few numbers. In second you can see immediately which parts of the company have a relevant influence on environment in view of sustainability. The practical application of the concept is presented in a case-study for the Hungarian pulp and paper branch. The experiences of the practical application verify, that the SPI can be an efficient tool for the planning of the implementation of an Environmental Management System.