Dominant's journey to an Environmental Management System
As we close out Enviro Week for 2021 it is important that we sit back and reflect on our impact on the environment, both as individuals, households, organisations or maybe holistically as a nation (if you’re politically inclined).
At Dominant, we don’t hold back in saying that we value continuous improvement very highly. Our staff are encouraged to raise or implement improvements, whatever their role in the organisation. That means that at all levels, we are committed to doing things a little better today than we did yesterday.
In 2019, i.e. the rosy days before COVID, we decided that it was time to solidify our commitment to the organisations impact on the environment. We genuinely saw this as an opportunity for improvement and to hold ourselves accountable to our own goals and targets. At that time, we chose to walk the path of implementing an Environmental Management System (ISO 14001:2015), complementing our existing certified Management Systems for Quality (ISO 9001:2015) and Food Safety (ISO 22000:2018).
What does this mean?
Well, an Environmental Management System (or EMS) primarily focuses on managing, and minimising, the environmental impact of a company’s operations. This shows dedication and long-term commitment by a company to address the environmental impact of their products, services and operations. As with any ISO certification, the organisation and system must be audited annually, so you can be sure that the organisation is being held to its promises.
One important point to note – An EMS does not signal anything about the quality or environmental credentials of the product itself, but alludes to the overall operation of the company.
For us, the journey to implement an EMS at Dominant was not simple or quick. The process involved many months of environmental evaluations, site environmental audits, improvement meetings, discussions, policy and procedure writing, among many other things. At the end of this, we were satisfied that we were meeting our own internal environmental goals as well as meeting the requirements of the ISO 14001:2015 standard.
So what does this mean for us and our customers?
Well, the key focus for us in implementing this system was to initially deliver the following:
Active monitoring and reduction of waste materials from our operations
Uncovering or devising more efficient ways to use energy, fuel, materials and other resources
More diligent design of our products to minimise their environmental impact, such as concentrated formulations to increase doses per bottle, using more agriculturally derived materials and improving the recyclability of our packaging choices.
Consciously looking for more ways to improve our environmental performance
I’m extremely proud of the efforts we have made in implementing this system, which we are continually evolving. From here we look forward to delivering on new environmental goals.
Happy Enviro Week to you all!
