Environmental issues/social Impact

Environmental issues/social impact

In today's world reputation, adherence to good practice and social responsibility are key--and this is ever more the case with regard to a firm's impact on the environment. Unfortunately, in an ever complicated world, we have seen companies hit hard by poor mid-management practices, altered reports and negligent testing, which has resulted in real damage or injury to the environment, workers or unknowing citizens affected by such practices.

Likewise, companies that have failed to double-check supposed legitimate test results have been badly burned. In a recent case, a local city official approached a known manufacturer demanding bribes based on facts known to him, which included the following:

• Testing was conducted through a cousin of a company official in order to achieve desired results.
• The actual results were quite different, and these could result in a temporary shutdown of the company itself--not to mention the health concerns put at risk by factory waste.

 Based on consistently encountering questionable environmental audit results in CEE and the risks such questionable results pose, Corporate Due  Diligence and Investigation (CDDI) has expanded services through its partners to offer full environmental audit and industrial hygiene testing.

These audits are commonly performed during an acquisition process. It should be stated the environmental due diligence covers a wider scope than just a site assessment and may include the whole context of the assessment of operations compliance with environmental law. In this respect environmental due diligence is more related to company operations, whereas site assessment is aiming to identify  the type and extent of land and water pollution,  its sources and history, impacts on health, possible remediation scenarios and their costs.

In this fashion we both recognize and reduce risk, with EDD reports following internationally recognized frameworks, and site assessment work adhearing to ASTM standards (common in the USA).

An EDD audit which can be also called a compliance audit, typically involves the following subject areas:

• Environmental permits ranging from specific use of the property and facility construction (environmental decision obtained prior to construction based on environmental impact assessment if needed).
•  Permits for emission of pollutants to air and water which are pollutant specific and quantitative defined mass per year. (It should be said that often false monitoring  results produced to demonstrate compliance and it is in your interest to nip this in the bud.
• Integrated permits under IPPC directive (some operations are obliged to receive a permit under Pollution Prevention Control Directive).
• Waste production permits  huge violations and corruption risks occur in this area.
• Monitoring and reporting requirements related to: waste management,  monitoring of waste water, stack emission, noise.  This can protect you from million euro fines
• Environmental pollution status(soil,  ground and surface water). This service does only compare analytical data to legal thresholds but also involves modeling to assess the acceptable level of pollution for a given land use and ecosystem.
• Waste management monitoring, including evaluating permit needs (or a lack of permits), waste coding (or wrong coding), waste amounts and quality.

Please note that we also offer 'quick checks' during which our consultants and laboratory experts take into consideration the business and the likely veracity of previous tests. Key elements are then retested in order to establish whether a complete, second environmental testing process is in order.

Please contact us for more information.