Like many industrialized countries, Trinidad and Tobago is faced with a tremendous challenge of dealing with the impacts of a rapidly growing industrial sector that for years have shown little or no regard for environmental protection and preservation. Daily our air, water and land continue to be polluted by liquid effluents, air emissions and solid waste from the industrialized sector. Command and control strategies were tried in order to reduce industrial environmental degradation with little or no success. While there is an effort to revisit these strategies and correct the limitations, companies in Trinidad and Tobago are increasingly looking towards ISO 14001 Environmental Management System as a tool to improve environmental performance, the company's image and achieve compliance with environmental laws. While ISO 14001 is not limited to any industrial sector or size of company the  implementation of this standard in Trinidad and Tobago started mainly with the larger companies in the Oil and Gas sector. This has changed somewhat as other companies, service providers and subcontractors of these large oil and gas companies realize the benefits to be gained by such a system.

What an Environmental Management System Entails

Environmental management systems can assist an organisation to meet its increasingly heavy burden of responsibility for the future condition of our world environment. Jaric utilising the ISO 14001 international guidelines will provide your company with a framework though which its environmental performance can be monitored, improved and controlled. We will assess your company's activities, products, processes and services that might affect the environment. We will develop an environmental improvement and training program. Following this we will ensure the company is on the right track by putting into place written procedures to control activities with a significant environmental impact, as well as there will be periodic auditing of the system to ensure effective operation. Other services cover: ISO 14001 gap audit; risk assessment; legislative review; action plan and awareness training.

Benefits of having an Environmental Management System

Having a well structured Environmental Management System can benefit your company in many different ways.

One of the main benefits is the education of all employees to their environmental responsibilities. Secondly you learn to identify opportunities to reduce waste in the company such as raw materials, utility use and waste disposal costs. Also you can reduce the risk of fines for non-compliance with environmental legislation. In addition you can ensure all operations have procedures to minimise their environmental impacts.