Which Environmental Qualification is right for you In this post I thought we could look at IEMA and NEBOSH approaches to environmental management qualifications. By comparing the two approaches at the foundation and advanced levels it might help you choose which is best for you if you want to undertake a formalised environmental management qualification. Foundation Level Firstly, let’s look at the foundation level. These are a good place to start if you have no formal knowledge of environmental management and provide a solid foundation in environmental management. At this level we have the IEMA Foundation Certificate in Environmental Management and the NEBOSH Certificate in Environmental Management (we will call…
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Accountability and Commitment Within Environmental Leadership
Key Elements of Effective Environmental Leadership In this post I thought we could have a look at what makes an effective environmental leader. Whether you are a leader or you aspire to be one or want to assess your current environmental leader hopefully this post will be useful to you! Strong environmental leadership involves the development of the organisations mission, values and vision. It involves two key themes, these are accountability and commitment. As an environmental leader you are the person who is accountable, such that the buck stops with you. Accountability therefore means that you are ultimately responsible for environmental management within the scope of your area of management,…
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Plastic Fantastic – Eliminating Plastic Waste
Ideas to eliminate plastic waste Plastic waste has been getting very bad press recently. The debate in the UK seemed to have been awoken by the screening of the final episode of Blue Planet 2. In which David Attenborough’s eloquent words in addition to some amazing footage highlighted the effects that plastic waste is having on the world’s oceans. In some ways it’s a shame it has taken this long for the public debate to start, as the problem with oceanic plastic waste has been known about for many years. What a problem it is too. Are you aware that there are five well known massive ‘gyres’ or whirlpools in…
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Are More Flood Defences The Answer?
NEBOSH Diploma in Environmental Management Element 11 The recent floods in late December 2015 and early January 2016 have been some of the worst on record. Many thousands of people have been affected and the cost of damage caused by the floods is projected to be over £1.5 billion. I thought in this blog post it would be interesting to take a look at what causes flooding and how flood risk can be managed. Historically, flooding was reduced by the building of flood defences for communities with little consideration of keeping water in uplands and flood plains. Such techniques might include building flood barriers (think the Thames Barrier) and installing…
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Civil Sanctions vs Criminal Sanctions for Environmental Offences
Let’s All be Civil If there is one topic I find causes confusion for students (as well as aspects and impacts, that is – see my earlier post!) it is civil sanctions – as covered in Element 5, Unit 1 of the NEBOSH Environmental Diploma. It does take some time to get your head around them but, believe me, it will be worth it! Civil sanctions are an attempt to improve the legal system by introducing a set of sanctions in criminal law that have their heart in civil law. They have been around in England and Wales since 2010. When an order and a subsequent amendment were introduced to…
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Environmental Responsibilities
Digital vs Paper – The jury’s out One of the photographs we looked at during a recent NEBOSH Environmental Awareness at Work pilot course featured a pile of waste electronic circuit boards that had been dumped in the corner of a farmer’s field somewhere in south-east Asia. I’m pretty certain that the origin of this waste was discarded computers that had been collected for recycling in the USA. This prompted a discussion in the class not only about the probity of many recycling schemes but also about the significant quantity of resources that we use in making electronic devices.
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Environmental Impacts
Which is the fairest of them all? One area that has interested me lately is how impacts on the environment are costed. This topic is more important than you might think, as it is the basis of many environmental laws and taxes. So it relates to all three of the reasons for managing environmental risk, as introduced in Unit 1, Element 1 of the NEBOSH National Diploma in Environmental Management: moral, legal and financial. There are two ways of working out who pays for the costs associated with environmental impacts – and any accountants among you will recognise these terms: internalising the cost, or externalising it. What do these mean?…
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Corporate Social Responsibility
Power to the People – Take Two Thinking about Corporate Social Responsibility and how the motivation for it is mainly moral, or ethical – as outlined in Element 2, Unit 1 of the NEBOSH Environmental Certificate – I was interested in the recent tongue-lashing the UK government received from the parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) over its plans to introduce a 5p charge on single-use plastic bags from 2015. On the face of it this seems a little harsh, given that plastic bags have been highlighted as a conspicuous waste of resources and an insidious source of pollution for many years. The EU Commission estimates that 800,000 tonnes of plastic…
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Natural Cycles and Their Delicate Environmental Balance
Being quite a keen cyclist I want to talk to you about natural cycles – no, not about biking around the countryside but how substances and elements are moved around in nature. If you research how long the planet has been in existence you will come up with a figure of 4 billon years, give or take a few million. Yet, even after all this time, substances on which nature relies to exist have not been consumed. This seems a little odd, when you think about it – 4 billon years is a very long time. But it’s because Earth is essentially a closed-loop system: very little gets in and…
