Understanding and Identifying Environmental Aspects and Impacts
What is Environmental Aspect An environmental aspect is any part of an organization’s activities that can interact with the environment, either positively or negatively. Or, simply put, the way a company’s activity, service, or product impacts the environment. This could be chemicals that are emitted into the air from a vent during processes, or chemicals that could be expelled in wastewater . For example, presence of cleaning agent in wastewater from a dry-cleaning service provider for big pharma which has a potential to contaminate water and soil . The cleaning agent in wastewater is the environmental aspect as the potential for water or soil pollution is the impact of the aspect to the environment. Also, consider the use of resources that a company’s processes utilize like water, electricity, fuels and other raw materials , or the environmental effect of the amount of waste / waste streams they dispose of or generate respectively . Categories of Environmental Aspects...