INTRODUCING ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT TOOLS TO VERY SMALL COMPANIES
The challenge
Most of small organisations do not have time nor resources to engage in sustainability management. At the same time, environmental consultancy offices mainly offer tools and methodologies that are only adapted to large companies. How to engage small organisations in environmental management?
The solution
The Ecotoolkit offers small companies three environmental management tools (ecoscan, ecomapping, ecotips), that may be used in order to get an understanding of current environmental situation and main problems, manage and reduce environmental impacts, and respectively improve environmental performance.
EcoScan is an online carbon and ecological footprint calculator for small businesses in 8 economic sectors: hotels, bars and restaurants, offices, hair dressers, car repair shops, home improvements, events, and retail shops. The Ecoscan module provides a company manager with very relevant information about the environmental impact of his or her business activities at a given point in time.
Ecomapping is a visual and practical tool that helps small businesses to analyse and manage their environmental behaviour. Ecomapping module provides guidance for the users on how to carry out an on-site environmental review to identify and analyse the main environmental aspects/problems related to energy use, water use, air emissions, waste, noise, purchasing, stakeholders, etc. T
Ecotips is a multisectoral database of environmental and economic tips for small and medium enterprises. The Ecotips module provides to a company manager key advice on specific measures for the environmental aspects and problems, which have been identified by using Ecomapping and Ecoscan.
Collectively, this toolkit can be seen as the first step to the implementation of a formal environmental management system meeting the requirement of EMAS and ISO 14001.
Partners involved
Time Foundation, Groupe One, 21 solutions, SEIT Tallinn.
Date
February 19, 2016
