Selected aspects of integrated environmental management

Abstract

Current trends in environmental care are characterised by the principles of comprehensiveness, integration, interdisciplinarity and transregionality. It is in this spirit that the methodological, legislative and economic instruments develop, and this whole trend is referred to using the term 'environmental management'. Environmental management constitutes a set of technical instruments and methods for managing the environment, based upon an identification of the environmental aspects of products, activities and services of any type of organisation, with the aim to adopt and implement effective proactive measures to reduce their negative impact on the environment. These measures, along with their level, relate to an organisation's possibilities, the market's pressure on it, and primarily with the organisation's management's awareness, maturity and ability to anticipate the introduction of stricter requirements. Environmental management, in the industrial production and service sectors, is one of the the most effective instruments for achieving the priority goal, which is to minimise the negative impact of production activities on the individual elements of the environment as part of the global trend of reducing the negative impact of human activity on the environment. The objective of this article is to indicate possibilities to improve the environment through the basic principles and techniques of integrated environmental management.

Keywords: Life Cycle Assessment; agriculture; environment; environmental management; industry; social factors; sustainability.