SOUL NATURAL MINERAL WATER

Environmental management System for

a packaged Mineral water Industry

Prepared for: Corporate Environment Management,

Prepared by: Anshul Gupta, Section 1
17 March 2017
IIFM, Bhopal

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SOUL NATURAL MINERAL WATER

INTRODUCTION
Background
In the rat race for more power and money, a lot of organisations forget about the negative impact they have on
the environment. The concept of ‘environmental sustainability’ was conceived over a general consensus and
need to protect the environment. This has led to a never-ending debate between the financial viability for an
organisation to adopt Environmental Management Systems (EMS) and the “pays to be green” notion.

Goals
Water plays a pivotal role for sustainable development, including poverty reduction. Given the importance of
water to poverty alleviation, human and ecosystem health, the management of water resources becomes of
central importance. Currently, over 1 billion people lack access to water and over 2.4 billion lack access to
basic sanitation. This water crisis is largely our own making. It has resulted not from the natural limitations of
the water supply or lack of financing and appropriate technologies, even though these are important factors,
but rather from profound failures in water governance. As a sustainable company, we rely on access to clean
water in order to conduct our business and to produce quality products for our consumers. We too are
concerned about the state of water in the world, now and in the future. This is true for our own operations, and
for the future of those whose access to clean water is at risk. Additionally, but in a much more limited scope,
we sell and provide bottled mineral and pure water to millions of consumers and finally, our consumers need
safe, clean water.

Aim of an Environmental Management System

The purpose of this International Standard is to provide the organisation with a framework to protect the
environment and have a proactive approach towards the changing global scenario. Contributing towards
environmental protection along with giving equal attention to socio- economic needs.
It intends us to achieve the set targets for the environmental management system.
• Protecting environment by preventing or mitigating adverse environmental impacts.
• Assisting the organisation in the fulfilment of compliance obligations.
• Inculcating the life cycle perspective in the products and services.
• Communicating environmental information to relevant parties. 


SUCCESS FACTOR
The success of an environmental management system depends on commitment from all levels and functions
of the organisation, led by top management. Organisations can leverage opportunities to prevent or mitigate
adverse environmental impacts and enhance beneficial environmental impacts, particularly those with strategic
and competitive implications. Top management can effectively address its risks and opportunities by
integrating environmental management into the organisation's business processes, strategic direction and
decision making, aligning them with other business priorities, and incorporating environmental governance into
its overall management system.

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SOUL NATURAL MINERAL WATER

SCOPE
The scope of the EMS applies to the production of bottled water and its packaging and distribution
undertaken by Soul Mineral Water. Soul Mineral Water shall endeavour to pursue a strategy that not only
encompasses all our activities but also that of our suppliers and customers. This International Standard helps
an organisation achieve the intended outcomes of its environmental management system, which provide value
for the environment, the organisation itself and interested parties. Consistent with the organisation's
environmental policy, the intended outcomes of an environmental management system include:

• enhancement of environmental performance

• fulfilment of compliance obligations;

• achievement of environmental objective

NORMATIVE REFERENCES
The EMS follows all the legal and regulatory policies, ISO 9001, IS 13428 and IS 14543:2004.

TERMS AND DEFINITION

Environmental Management System: Part of management system used to manage environment aspects,
fulfil compliance obligations, address risks & opportunities.

Environmental Policy: Intentions & direction of an organisation related to environmental performance, as

formally expressed by top management.

Top Management: Person or group of people who direct & control organisation at highest level.

Interested Party: Person or organisation that can affect, be affected by or perceive itself to be affected by a
decision or activity.

Environmental Aspect: Element of an organisation’s activities or products or services that interact or can
interact with the environment.

Environmental Impact: Change to the environment whether adverse or beneficial, wholly or partially resulting
from an organisation’s environmental aspects.

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CONTEXT OF THE ORGANISATION

Understanding the organisation & its context

Soul Mineral Water is an independent company based in Chandigarh and providing packaged Mineral Water
related products. Our Products include Mineral Water 20 litre jar, Mineral Water Bottle (300 ml, 500 ml, 1 litre, 2
litres), and Home delivery service for Commercial Purpose, Home purposes. We have state of the art
Automatic Bottle Filling Line and Water Pouch Packing Machine. Our engineers have more practical
experience and skill sets have been developed through employment with the leading companies in the state as
well as on the national level. Production and bottling plant is located in Chandigarh

Understanding the need and expectations of interested parties

These parties are categorised into External and Internal parties.

External Parties includes Legal, Customer(Type A and Type B), Insurer, Suppliers, Trade bodies/associations,
Emergency services, Staff dependents, Competitors, Shareholders, Banks and other finance, Business
partners, and Contractors.

Internal Parties includes Staff (maintenance, administration, loading, etc.), Contractors, Business Partners,
Workers’(labour) representative.

Determining the scope of EMS

The standard advises that the scope should be maintained and be available to interested parties as
“documented information,” a term specific to ISO 14001:2015 that we looked at in the article A new approach
to documented information in ISO 14001:2015. So, another factor to consider is that definition of EMS scope
is so critical that you must commit your findings to documented information, as it is considered even more
important than in the 14001:2004 standard. This serves the dual purpose of allowing you to make this critical
information available to stakeholders, shareholders, and external parties, and also to allow you to continually
review and improve the scope of the EMS itself.

Environment Management System

Action Priority Responsibility Schedule Resources needed

Bottle Recycling Program High Mr. Anand Joshi Pilot (Oct 2017) • Supply Chain for recycled
Final(Sept 2018) material
• Technology for utilising
used bottles

Waste Water Treatment High Mr. Aadil Hussain October 2018 Waste water handling unit to
modernised

Chlorine phase out High Ms. Geethika Malik Phase out More effort toward non
completely by chlorine based
Dec 2108 technology

Water Sourcing High Mr. Sushil Gautam Pilot by July Infrastructure need to be
2017 established

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LEADERSHIP

Leadership and Commitment

We at Soul Mineral Water didn’t have any prior expertise in EMS hence initially we recruited personnel for our
EMS Core Team. The higher management appointed the environmental program manager of Soul Mineral
Water Mr Aman Gupta to lead the EMS implementation. The Environmental Program Manager was
designated as the EMS Project Manager or “Environmental Management Representative (EMR)”.The EMS core
team is made up of twelve members, including departmental managers from each of the distinct operational
area. Top management is actively involved in all core team activities.

Environment Policy
At Soul Mineral Water, we developed our initial Environmental Policy after a year of EMS implementation,
opting to defer until after the environmental aspects and impacts were identified. This delay ensured that we
captured the environmental characteristics of our organisation.

The core elements of our environment policy are:

• Full compliance with all applicable legal environmental requirements as specified by various agencies like
CPCB and SPCB.

• The continual improvement of the environmental performance of all our activities, products and services and
prevention of pollution.

• The systematic and rigorous assessment and optimisation of various environmental impacts in the design
of new products.

• The responsible sourcing of ingredients, packaging materials and other goods and services from suppliers
who comply with our environmental policy.

• Meaningful and accurate environmental information sharing among the various stakeholders on the
environmental impacts of the company.

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Organisational roles, responsibilities & authorities

Environmental Responsibility Person(s) Responsible

Establish Overall Direction CEO, Board of Directors

Develop Environment Policy CEO, Chief Environment Manager(EMR)

Monitor overall EMS Performance EMR

Assure Regulatory Compliance Operating officers(individual departments)

Ensure Continual improvement All managers

Technology support for achieving targets Research and Development Manger

Compliance with defined Procedures All staff

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6.PLANNING

6.1 Actions to address risks & opportunities

6.1.1 Environmental Aspects

For undertaking this step, we hired Consulting for identifying the significant impact along with our EMS team to
get an independent view of our impacts. The aspects found were judged for their significance. A measurement
system was employed to separate those impacts which were significant and those that are not.
Based on the finding the following significant aspect- impacts were found:

Activity Ascepts Impacts

Bottle manufacturing Air emission Air Pollution

Petroleum products consumption Natural Resource depletion
Waste water disposal Water Pollution

Water Purification Chemical treatment of water Chemical effluent release

Ground water consumption Natural resource consumption

Overall Manufacturing Fuel & Energy consumption Natural resource depletion

Transport Fuel Consumption Air pollution

Natural resource consumption

Ends of use Disposal of bottles Water, soil pollution

Land use change

6.1.2 Compliance Obligations

The operations of the plant are governed by the following laws:

• Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974

• Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Cess Act, 1977
• Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981
• Environment (Protection) Act, 1986
• Public Liability Insurance Act, 1991
• National Environment Appellate Authority Act, 1997 


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6.2 Environmental Objectives & Planning to achieve them

Objectives Target

Raw Material Consumption Use 20 per cent of total raw material consumption (2015
level) from recycled sources by 2017.

Water Consumption Maintain suspended solids and Biological Oxygen Demand

(BOD) below 10 ppm by 2018.

Sustainable Plant Operations Phase out chlorine gas use for water treatment by end of
2017.

Water Footprint 70 percent of water consumed to be obtained through rain

water harvesting by 2017.

7. SUPPORT

An effective environmental management system cannot be maintained or improved without adequate

resources. As a function of planning, such resources should be determined and provided. This clause gathers
together in one place all the areas relating to the “people, place and procedural” aspects of the management
systems. The basic HLS clauses cover the following;

7.1 Resources

7.2 Competence

7.3 Awareness

7.4 Communication

7.5 Documented Information

7.1 Resources

The main intention behind this general requirement is that the organisation must determine and provide the
resources needed for the establishment, implementation, maintenance and continual improvement of the
environmental management- covering all aspects of people and infrastructure. Whilst not contained in the ISO
14001 standard, the ISO 9001 standards contains a very interesting additional requirement termed
“organisational knowledge”, which relates to ensuring that the organisation understands internal and external
knowledge needs and can demonstrate how this is managed. This could also include knowledge management
of resources, and ensuring that there is effective succession planning for personnel, and processes for
capturing individual and group knowledge. It isn’t a documented requirement of ISO 14001 but it is relevant
and useful as a general principle.

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7.2 Competence

In order to determine competence, competence criteria needs to be established for each function and role
relevant to the environmental management system. This can then be used to assess existing competence and
determine future needs. Where criteria are not met, some action is required to fill the gap.

7.3 Awareness

Personnel need to be made aware of the environmental policy, significant aspects and impacts of relevance to
their activities, how they contribute to the environmental objectives, environmental performance and
compliance obligations, and the implications of failures in compliance.

7.4 Communication

Effective communication is essential for a management system. Top management need to ensure that
mechanisms are in place to facilitate this. It should be recognised that communication is two-way and will not
only need to cover what is required, but also what was achieved. With ISO 14001:2015 the importance of
internal communications and external communications are emphasised. This is a natural legacy of the existing
ISO 14001:2004 and the importance of interested parties in environment issues. This sub clause also makes
very clear the importance of ensuring in relation to environmental reporting and associated communications
that the organisation shall “ensure that environmental information communicated is consistent with information
generated within the environmental management system, and is reliable”. This is an excellent addition and
consistent with other corporate reporting standards. It also emphasises the need to plan and implement a
process for communications along the familiar ‘who, what, when how’ principles.

7.5 Documented information

Most of the ISO 14001:2015 text will be familiar, being similar to the requirements of ISO 14001:2004, but
there is some logical broadening to encompass electronic and web- based media. It is worth emphasising
here that the standard no longer species the need for documented procedures – it is up to the organisation to
decide what is needed. However, it does specify on a number of occasions the need to maintain or retain
documented information, in order to give structure, clarity and evidence of the system being maintained and
effective. The term “documented information” now replaces the previously used terms “documented
procedure” and “records”.

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8. OPERATION

8.1 Operational Planning and Control

The overall purpose of operational planning and control is to ensure that processes are in place to meet the
environmental management system requirements and to implement actions identified in 6.1 and 6.2. There
are some clearer and stronger requirements relating to outsourced processes and control of changes. In
addition, requirements around the life cycle perspective approach are de ned in more detail, covering the key
elements of:

• Environmental requirements for procurement of products and services

• Establishing controls to ensure environmental requirements are addressed in the design and development
phase

• Communicating environmental requirements to providers (including suppliers, contractors and others)

• Providing key environmental information on products and services in the context of the life cycle (e.g. end-
of- life information).

The organisation needs to determine and evaluate the level of control and infuence over the different life cycle
elements, based on the context of the organisation and the consideration of significant environmental aspects,
compliance obligations and risks associated with threats and opportunities. Overall ISO 14001:2015 requires a
structured approach to all aspects of the products and services with a strong reference point to life cycle
perspective.

8.2 Emergency Preparedness and Response

This clause is clear in requiring the organisation to establish, implement and maintain processes needed to
handle potential emergency situations.

The more detailed requirements cover the need to ensure:

• That the organisation plans actions to mitigate or prevent environmental consequences;

• The organisation responds to actual emergency situations;

• Takes action to prevent or mitigate the consequences of emergency situation;

• Periodic testing of any procedures, plans and response mechanisms;

• Periodic reviews and updates of procedures and plans based on experience;

• Provision of relevant information and training to relevant interested parties.

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9. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

9.1 Monitoring, measurement, analysis and evaluation

This sub-clause encompasses two key areas:

• Monitoring, measurement, analysis and evaluation of environmental performance and the effectiveness of
the system;

• Evaluation of compliance with all legal and other obligations.

The range of monitoring and measurement required needs to be determined for those processes and activities
which relate to significant environmental aspects/impacts, environmental objectives, key areas of operational
control and processes, and also for evaluating the meeting of compliance obligations.

For the monitoring and measurement determined as required, the organisation also needs to determine key
criteria and requirements, including:

• Methods for monitoring, measurement, analysis and evaluation;

• Key performance indicators and performance evaluation metrics;

• When, where, how and by whom the monitoring, measurement, evaluation and analysis is carried out; n
Specification, management and maintenance of key monitoring equipment and data handling processes.

The output from these activities provide key inputs for a range of other elements of the environmental
management system, including management review, and in determining the internal and external
communications required on the environmental management system and its performance.

9.2 Internal audit

Internal audits have always been a key element of ISO 14001 in helping to assess the effectiveness of the
environmental management system.

An audit programme needs to be established to ensure that all processes are audited at the required
frequency, the focus being on those most critical to the business.To ensure that internal audits are consistent
and thorough, a clear objective and scope should be defined for each audit.

This will also assist with auditor selection to ensure objectivity and impartiality. To get the best results, auditors
should have a working knowledge of what is to be audited, but management must act on audit results. This is
often limited to corrective action relating to any nonconformities that are found, but there also needs to be
consideration of underlying causes and more extensive actions to mitigate or eliminate risk. Follow up activities
should be performed to ensure that the action taken as a result of an audit is effective.

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9.3 Management review

The main aim of our management review is to ensure the continuing suitability, adequacy and effectiveness of
the quality management system. Only through conducting the review at sufficient intervals providing adequate
information and ensuring the right people are involved can this aim be achieved. The standard details the
minimum inputs to the review process. Top management should also use the review as an opportunity to
identify improvements that can be made and/or any changes required, including the resources needed.

The input to management review should include information on;

• Status of previous actions from management reviews;

• Changes in internal/external inputs, signi cant aspects/ impacts and compliance obligations;

• Achievement and progress on environmental objectives;

• Information on environmental performance;

• Communications from external interested parties; n Opportunities for continual improvement;

• Adequacy of resources for the environmental management system.

The output from the management review should include any decisions and actions related to;

• Conclusions on the suitability, adequacy and effectiveness of the system;

• Continual improvement opportunities,

• Changes to the environmental management system, including resources;

• Actions relating to objectives not achieved; n Implications for the strategic direction of the organisation.

10. IMPROVEMENT

10.1 General

This states that the organization shall determine opportunities for improvement and implement necessary
actions to achieve intended outcomes.

10.2 Nonconformity and corrective action

The main aim of the corrective action process is to eliminate the causes of actual problems so as to avoid
recurrence of those problems. It is a reactive process, in that it is triggered after an undesired event (e.g.

a pollution event). In essence, the process uses the principles of root cause analysis. A basic approach to
problem solving is “cause” and “effect”, and it is the cause that needs to be eliminated. Action taken should be
appropriate and proportionate to the impact of the nonconformity. As part of the corrective action process, the
effectiveness of action taken must be checked to ensure it is effective.

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