An environmental risk assessment allows you to assess the likelihood of your business causing harm to the environment. This includes describing potential hazards and impacts before taking precautions to reduce the risks.
It uses similar techniques to the health and safety risk assessment your business already has to perform.
How to carry out an environmental risk assessment
There are five key steps to carrying out an environmental risk assessment. You need to:
- identify any hazards, ie possible sources of harm
- describe the harm they might cause
- evaluate the risk of occurance and identify precautions
- record the results of the assessment and implement precautions
- review the assessment at regular intervals
Things to include in your environmental risk assessment
When looking for environmental hazards in your business, you should consider:
- waste storage and disposal, eg making sure that proper containers are used, and are located away from drains and watercourses
- emissions, egdust and other substances to the air
- hazardous substance storage, use and disposal
- liquid waste drainage and disposal
- environmental impact of raw materials, eg potentially toxic metals or other materials
- environmental impact of packaging
There are statutory minimum standards to maintain in some of these areas.
Environmental impact assessments
If your business is planning a development that's likely to have a significant effect on the environment, you will first have to carry out an Environmental Impact Assessment.
Get a free sustainability report
All Northern Ireland businesses with an annual energy and resource spend of more than £30k can get a free assessment of their environmental performance across areas such as raw materials, energy, carbon, packaging, biodiversity and waste - find out more about Invest NI Sustainability Reports.
