What Environmental Auditing Involves
Launch library · evergreen read
An environmental audit systematically reviews an organisation's environmental performance and compliance against relevant legal requirements and internal policies, typically examining written records, physical sites and management practices to verify that what an organisation formally claims about its environmental performance genuinely matches what is actually happening in practice on the ground.
Audits can be conducted internally by an organisation's own staff for its own management purposes, or externally by an independent auditor, with external audits generally carrying more credibility precisely because the auditor has no direct stake in the outcome and can assess performance without any real, inherent conflict of interest.
Findings from an environmental audit typically feed into a corrective action plan addressing any identified gaps between required and actual performance, making auditing less a one off compliance exercise and more an ongoing, repeated cycle of assessment and steady improvement that a genuinely well managed organisation carries out regularly over time.