EMAS Sectoral Reference Documents (SRDs)

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The Community Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) was introduced in 1993 for voluntary participation by organisations, by Council Regulation (EEC) No 1836/93 of 29 June 1993. Subsequently, EMAS has undergone two major revisions:

Regulation (EC) No 761/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 March 2001 (EC, 2001);
Regulation (EC) No 1221/2009 of the European Parliament and Council on 25 November 2009.

The latest EMAS Regulation revision was informed by an extensive evaluation of the EMAS scheme that began in 2005. Consequently, on 16 July 2008, the Commission adopted a proposal for the revision of the EMAS Regulation as part of the Sustainable Consumption and Production Action Plan. The objective of the proposal was to strengthen the scheme by increasing its efficiency and its attractiveness for organisations. The proposal was also intended to generate a wider influence, beyond EMAS registered organisations, by encouraging registered organisations to account for indirect environmental impacts when selecting suppliers and service providers.

One of the major changes is to promote best environmental management practice. For this purpose, Sectoral Reference Documents (SRDs) shall be elaborated (Article 46.1). In addition to detailed technical information describing best environmental management practice to improve environmental performance, these reference documents also contain sector-specific key performance core indicators, and benchmarks of excellence.

Sectors to be covered by SRDs

SRDs will be elaborated for the following sectors identified as priority sectors (see the Communication of the Commission concerned):

Retail trade,
Tourism,
Construction,
Public Administration,
Agriculture — Crop production and Animal production,
Food and beverage manufacturing,
Car manufacturing,
Manufacture of electronical and electric equipment,
Manufacture of fabricated metal products, except machinery and equipment,
Waste management,
Telecommunications.

In the first phase, four documents are being produced by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS), part of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, as part of a pilot study on the development process for these reference documents:

Retail Trade

Tourism

Construction

Public Administration

These pilot documents may be used as templates for the future development of additional reference documents.

How to understand and use SRDs

SRDs are intended as a support tool for all actors in the respective sectors who intend to improve their environmental performance. This means that SRDs are elaborated not only for those organisations that have implemented EMAS, but for all organisations that have implemented any environmental management system, or any organisations that wish to contribute to environmental protection and sustainability. However, for EMAS registration, the assessment of the environmental performance of the organisation concerned shall take into account the relevant SRD. The same applies to the verifiers when checking the requirements according to Article 18 of the EMAS regulation.

Contacts in IPTS

The following people are part of the IPTS EMAS team:

Harald Schönberger, harald.schoenberger[at]ec.europa.eu
David Styles, david.styles[at]ec.europa.eu
José-Luis Gálvez jose-luis.galvez-martos[at]ec.europa.eu