EcoLodgical - Conducting an Environmental Audit of Your Hotel Building Design and Operation

ECOLODGICAL
CONDUCTING AN ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIT

Now that your hotel Environmental Policy is in place and the hotel's Environmental Team has been established, it is time to take action. But before any action is decided upon it is important to understand the problems you face. Below you will learn what an Environmental Audit is, what to audit, where to look for problems, and how to measure and record those problems.

Defintion

An Environmental Audit is a systematic, documented, periodic and objective process that assesses an organization's activities and services in relation to [1]:

Assessing compliance with relevant statutory and internal requirements
Facilitating management control of environmental practices
Promoting good environmental management
Maintaining credibility with the public
Raising staff awareness and enforcing commitment to departmental environmental policy
Exploring improvement opportunities
Establishing the performance baseline for developing an Environmental Management System (EMS)

Purpose

To understand as many of the environmental impacts of the hotel building and operation and quantify a benchmark to measure progress.

Key Steps

1. Obtain committment from the directorate level and communicate the purpose of the Environmental Audit to all personel in the organization.

2. Define the scope of the Environmental Audit including a list of all sites that are to be audited. Identify the objective of the audit and what areas of the organization the audit should include or disclude.

3. The Environmental Audit should encompass the following:

Material management, savings and alternatives
Energy management and savings
Water management and economy of use
Waste generation, management and disposal
Noise reduction, evaluation and control
(internal and external)
Air emissions and indoor air quality
Environmental emergency prevention and preparedness
Transportation and travelling practices
Staff awareness, participation and training in environmental issues
Environmental information publicity
Public enquiry and complaints response
Environmental management system set up, suitability and performance
Building environmental performance

4. Examine and document all potential environmental impacts.

Below is a flowchart provided by the Hong Kong Environmental Protection Department depicting all the steps of conducting and Environmental Audit [1].

Figure 1: Flowchart depicting Environmental Audit process.

Source: http://www.epd.gov.hk/epd/english/how_help/tools_ea/audit_2.html

Now that you understand how to conduct an Environmental Audit you can direct your environmental team to conduct an audit. For more information please see the links to related resources on the right side menu or in the references section below.

References

1. Hong Kong Environmental Protection Department, What is an Environmental Audit?, 2002.
http://www.epd.gov.hk/epd/english/how_help/tools_ea/audit_2.html