THE STUDY OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT TOOLS SYSTEM

Abstract

The object of this article is to identify the system of environmental management tools and the international typology of its elements; to analyse the evolution of their launch in Lithuania and in the international context, as well as to formulate the insights of their more effective use. The article was prepared by using the logical analysis and general conclusions of scientific, standard, statistical literature and the descriptions of environmental organizations’ activities also on the ground of the research of Lithuanian organisations’, which was carried out by the author of this article.

In the article, there is summarized the system of international environmental certification and of the other assurance tools of sustainable development, that unites eco-labelling of products, the certification of settling and recreation services, forests’ and wood supply chain, as well as buildings’ energetic certification, the certification of IT equipments, mobile phones TCO ecologic and ergonomic certification, the identification of packing materials, the certification of environmental management systems and others. In the article are revealed the peculiarities and problem fields of the development evolution of environmental management systems (ISO 14001, EMAS) and other tools in Lithuania and in the international context. For more objective comparison of sustainable development in different countries and regions, the author suggests a new index – the quantity of certificates (ISO 14001, EMAS, ecological products’ and others) per 1000 inhabitants of a country. Though the implementation of ISO 14001 systems in Lithuania has grown up significantly in recent years, we still lag behind not even the most developed countries of the world, but also behind some new EU members, if we count this index for 1000 inhabitants. In the meanwhile, there are no EMAS environmental systems implemented in Lithuania, even though they are successfully planted in other EU and Baltic states. There’s strongly recommended for the State authorities that perform the environmental politics in Lithuania to strengthen the infrastructure of environmental certification, to execute a real development of “green purchases”, to give an incentive to the organisations of our Country to create and certificate EMAS environmental systems and to draw in the secondary schools to “Kids’ ISO 14000” programmes, that were very effective in the other countries of the world.