To support those principles, we have developed a comprehensive framework for measuring our company’s environmental aspects and impacts, identifying and mitigating risks, ensuring compliance with regulations and delivering on our commitment to continual improvement.
Standard procedures for identifying potential environmental risks at each facility, including air emissions, water sources and discharges, generated wastes and spill potential. We modeled our approach after the ISO 14001 environmenta planning section. It includes a matrix that assigns an environmental impact score to each identified aspect of a process within the facility, along with scoring to determine the significance of each risk. Our EMS also includes several additional elements in line with ISO 14001, including emergency preparedness and response, internal audit, management review, corrective action and continual improvement.
Assessment and management plans based on identified risks. Zurn Elkay’s Director of EH&S oversees management of our EMS program and audits.
A detailed compliance calendar to capture regulatory and corporate obligations, such as regulatory permit requirements, reporting deadlines, employee awareness training and regular risk reviews that provide a closed-loop process to ensure accountability.
Training sessions for our associates to recognize environmental risks in the fundamental areas of water, air and land.
Data collection on any environmental findings to develop action plans and corrective actions, aimed at continuous improvement.
Internal communications include monthly reporting to operations leadership on environmental and health & safety objectives, targets and KPIs, as well as Safety Alerts to quickly communicate an incident and corrective action to facility managers and associates. Externally, the company's Environmental and Sustainability Policy is communicated on the company's public website, and when necessary, the corporate risk management and external communications teams work together to engage customers, community members, elected officials and the media on environmental issues.
Internal environmental audits are a fundamental management tool in our program. We built our audit process based on regulatory requirements and best management practices to focus on three main requirements: documentation and training, facility conditions and associate interviews.
We review documentation and training, facility conditions and associate interviews against 11 environmental sections
We break down the environmental audit into questions tied directly to a regulatory or compliance requirement and operational and management system questions that are tied to a Zurn Elkay best management practice
We manage audit checklists and corrective actions though our online environmental health and safety (EHS) management tool, which ensures timely completion and effectiveness of assigned corrective actions